Lullabies in the Frost
by agent000
Summary: Jack thought he had already moved on. His family had died long ago. A few hundred years should be enough time to let go of old ties. However, Father Time didn't agree with Jack's conclusion, and it was high time that Jack tie up loose ends with his family. Father Time would see to that.
1. Chapter 1

_**Somebody grab the confetti, because we need to throw a party, since Agent000 is back on fanfiction, amazingly enough! Granted, this is the first one I've EVER written on here that has no Fullmetal Alchemist in it, which feels kind of weird, but it's also the first one in ages that has inspired me, so I figured I'd write it and see what happened.**_

_**Now, before we go on, I need to alert you all to some "issues" that you might bicker over with me, heh heh. Rise of the Guardians is full of plotholes. Plotholes that are so big you can drive tanks through. And it makes me sad. So I've been researching like crazy to try and concoct ways to patch up the plotholes for this story, and I'm hoping I did that. I occasionally change "established" facts in order to do so, but I'm hoping I've at least made the story coherent. I've done my best anyway.**_

_**I do apologize in advance if I've screwed up any historical or cultural references in here. Social Studies was by far my WORST subject, but I hope I can capture the illusion of culture and time in here, all the same. Hopefully I at least do a better job than the movie did. I absolutely adore the movie, but their storytelling skills were a little lazy. ;)**_

_**Anyway, without further ado, here is Dabba Dabba Dove. I hope you enjoy the story. :)**_

_**Disclaimer: Ah, my old nemesis, the disclaimer, the purpose of which we know not of, considering that we all post these things on fanfiction, which is like an admission that we don't own the worlds we write about, not to mention adding disclaimers is not mentioned in the fanfiction agreement. Ah well, it's tradition I guess, and who am I to break the lovely tradition of the disclaimer? I do not own Rise of the Guardians. (What the heck? I didn't say Fullmetal Alchemist? I'm freaking out, man! *snickers*)**_

Jamie's laughter was worth the world to Jack Frost, and he was willing to risk creating more trouble for himself just to hear it. He always created trouble for himself anyway, so what was the problem? He was Jack Frost, and everyone had to deal with it.

"So how did you make Father Time so mad?" said Jamie between spurts of laughter.

Jack shrugged. That was something he was still trying to figure out himself. "Maybe he didn't like me freezing a couple of his hourglasses, the spoilsport." He plopped down onto his back in the snow and looked up into the sky. It was a clear night, which meant creating snow was out of the question during this night, but the stars were beautiful.

"You're crazy!" Jamie leaned over Jack, obscuring his view of the stars. So much for stargazing. All he was going to get was Jamiegazing if the kid kept staring like that. "Why would you freeze his hourglasses?"

"I wanted to see what would happen."

Jamie slapped the snow and laughed again. Beautiful sound. "And what did happen?"

"Eh," Jack shrugged. "The brute catapulted me back in time a year."

The shocked reaction on Jamie's face made Jack want to laugh harder than Jamie had been doing, but he resisted the urge just in case Jamie started laughing again. He didn't want to miss it. Jamie wouldn't be a child for very long.

"You went back in time? That's possible?"

Jack groaned as he sat up. How was he going to explain this to Jamie? There had to be a good way to do so without getting boring. Boring was a bad, evil, diabological thing, and the word had no business belonging in Jack's vocabulary.

"Yes, it's possible," said Jack, "but you have to annoy the heck out of old Daddy Time first, which I wouldn't advise anyone to do."

"But you did it!" said Jamie.

"All the more reason not to do it yourself. If I do it, it has to be a bad idea."

Jamie crossed his arms and poked out his lower lip to try to pout at Jack, though Jack saw the little upturned corners of Jamie's mouth trying not to betray the smile behind the pout and failing miserably. "It's not like I know where to find Father Time anyway."

"Good," said Jack. "Stay away from him. He's nothing but trouble."

This made Jamie snort, which turned into a series of giggles and accusatory finger shakings, but it took a while before Jamie was able to form words to accompany his giggles, though the words eventually happened. "Jack Frost is telling me to avoid someone because he's nothing but trouble. Really now?" The laughter drowned out anything else Jamie had intended to say, though that was fine by Jack. He preferred to hear Jamie laughing anyway.

"See?" Jack gestured wildly with his hands. His words **must** be emphasized, lest they be misunderstood by mere mortals and children and little chipmunks. "If I'm telling you someone's trouble, they _have_ to be trouble!"

Jamie merely shook his head and laughed some more, which wasn't quite the reaction that Jack wanted. He hated to admit it, but he was slightly worried that Jamie might attempt to follow in his footsteps and do something stupid, which would actually be a problem if one had a limited lifespan like a human did. He would be much more at ease if Jamie reassured him that he would not look for Father Time and try to annoy him.

"Look," he said, "when the guy causes trouble, he _really_ causes trouble. He's bumped me back in time quite a few times!"

What followed was a single, raucous laugh from Jamie, and an evil, pointing finger. "You mean you were stupid enough to try it more than once?"

"Heh heh." Now Jack felt stupid, having his own stupidity pointed out so clearly like that. He preferred the company of children just so he wouldn't realize how stupid he was, but on occasion, they had to pull an evil trick like the adults and point out his stupidity, the little monster.

He grabbed a snowball and threw it in Jamie's face, distracting the little villain long enough for Jack to jump to his feet and take off running. This was much better than revealing his own stupidity, especially with little Jamie running behind him, throwing snowballs at him and shouting about how Jack was being so unfair.

The running abruptly stopped upon Jack running into a large body of water. Jamie skidded to a stop beside him and said, "What's wrong, Jack?" They both knew that nothing prevented Jack from gliding right over the lake, so his hesitation was a little strange.

"It's just," Jack started to say, but his voice trailed off. He didn't really want to drag Jamie into his personal troubles. Telling him about Father Time was a little more than he had bargained for as it was.

"What?" said Jamie, and Jack sighed. Jamie looked worried, and the last thing he wanted to do was worry the little guy, but he didn't know how much revelation was a good idea. Maybe he could just keep a close eye on Jamie's face to determine when enough was enough.

"It's just that," Jack started again, "This is where I died."

"_Holy_-" Jamie's cheeks flushed, and he slapped his hands over his face. "But I thought you were, like, _not_ a ghost. Or something."

Jack shook his head and started laughing. A ghost indeed. If he was anything undead, he was much more likely to be a poltergeist than anything else, though that term didn't quite apply either. But being a poltergeist didn't sound half bad. He could still play tricks on random people in that form.

"No, not a ghost, Jamie." He covered his face and continue laughing for another minute. He shouldn't be so amused at the thought of himself as a ghost, but he just couldn't help himself. He was probably just scared at having to discuss tough subjects with Jamie and was manifesting it this way, but that didn't excuse the stupid laughter. Jamie's expectant expression made him realize he had to combat the assessment with something better though, so he wracked his mind for terms that would make sense.

"I'm a-I'm a sprite. A winter sprite."

Jamie's confusion only grew worse. "You're a can of soda?"

Jack spluttered and covered his mouth so he wouldn't come across as any ruder than he already had been. "If I was a can of soda, do you know how frozen I would be?"

That took a moment for Jamie to ponder on, but he didn't waver when he said, "So you're a Slurpee then?"

Close enough. "Yep. That's it. You got me. I'm a big, gigantic Slurpee. You may now poke a straw in me and slurp me up."

Jamie made an expression of disgust. "Eh, no thanks. I don't drinks Slurpees in the winter anyway."

That was an amusing comeback, but not amusing enough to force Jack to laugh, and it gave him an easy way out of the difficult conversation if he played it properly. He turned and took a few steps away from the lake, hoping Jamie would follow and forget all about their awkward conversation.

"Wait!" Jamie bolted after Jack and barrelled into him, sending Jack sprawling into the snow. Well, that was something he didn't mind, but he could see questions on Jamie's face, and he was pretty sure he would mind those.

"What do you mean, 'you died', Jack? And what's a sprite?"

Great, so the little guy had been smart enough to figure out that a winter sprite wasn't a gigantic walking Slurpee. He didn't give the kid enough credit. He was smarter than was allowed for kids his age. Granted, most kids his age probably would have seen through that charade, but being smart enough to see through Jack's tricks should be criminal at any age.

Jack sighed. It was time to just give in. "A sprite is sort of like, um-a fairy, I guess. Not a ghost or anything." That explanation didn't seem to help matters much, as it just gave Jamie a fit of giggles at the mental image of Jack Frost waltzing around in a tutu and little gauzy wings, which he felt no shame in sharing the details with Jack.

Eventually, Jamie calmed back down and turned seriously to Jack. "So, do people turn into fairies when they die?"

"Not normally," said Jack, and he shook his head amusedly. "Your ghost theory might be accurate for most people. I wouldn't know."

"Then how did you become a fairy?"

This fairy business was getting old fast. Jack rolled his eyes and pushed Jamie up so the two of them could sit up properly on the snow. "I'd rather be called a sprite if you don't mind." Jamie didn't mind, so Jack continued on. "I died saving my sister's life, so the Man in the Moon decided I should live on like this. He made me into what I am now."

Jamie looked up at the moon, and was clearly impressed by it, probably for the first time in a long time. It was just as well, as the moon deserved to have more respect than it was traditionally given.

It was clear, looking at little Jamie's face, that the gears inside his head were churning and trying so hard to connect the pieces of the crazy story. Jack had told him hardly anything about his life, but just that tiny bit had been enough to upset Jamie's sense of reality. It would be best to not tell Jamie much more at this point, especially since Jack's memories were still coming back bit by bit. The tooth box had revealed just enough to unlock the part of his brain that had access to his memories, but the rest of the job was up to him. He didn't know if he could take remembering everything all at once, any more than Jamie could.

"So, you were-you were human once?" Jamie turned back to face Jack, but Jack wasn't so sure he wanted to face Jamie. This subject was a little bit scary.

"Yeah, I was," he said.

"Whoa!" said Jamie, "That's crazy! There was a human named Jack Frost?"

There were probably still plenty of unfortunate humans named Jack Frost, but that was beside the point. "No, my name was Jackson Overland. I became Jack Frost when I took this form."

"Whoa, cool!" said Jamie. "Jackson Overland. It's like Overland Lake, but-" That stopped both of them short, and they turned to look back at the lake. Jack's memories had only recently started returning, and before then, he hadn't questioned the name of the lake. It had always been named Overland Lake. But the more he thought about it, the reason it was named Overland Lake became obvious. He'd been memorialized there.

"They named the lake after you?" said Jamie.

"They-They must have," said Jack. He felt really stupid, and knew he probably looked it too, since he wasn't able to just proclaim with confidence that yes, Overland Lake was indeed named after him. But the thought had never crossed his mind before. He had left his loved ones behind, and they had missed him badly enough to convince everyone for centuries afterward to remember him.

A deep longing stretched through his heart, and he felt like it was going to break. He had left things untied with his family back then. What had happened to them after he'd died? Had Tannie gone on to make a good life for herself? She was so young to have lost her big brother, about Jamie's age. Was that why he was so attached to Jamie and his family?

"That's cool!" said Jamie, "Maybe my parents have heard of you then. The not-Jack-Frost you, I mean."

"Maybe," said Jack. He was very done with this conversation. How could he get Jamie to stop asking questions? "Why don't you go ask your parents about it?"

"Right now?"

"Yeah, why not?"

Jamie thought on that a moment. "Will you still be here when I get back?"

Oh, that sly little devil. Well, Jack was just as sly as a ten-year-old. Actually, he hoped he was moreso. He'd had a lot more time to develop the skill. Maybe Jamie really was more clever than him. "I'll be somewhere," he said. "You don't have to worry, Jamie. You'll see me again soon. This is home!" He waved both his hands at the expanse surrounding the both of them.

That seemed to be good enough for Jamie, as he nodded and then ran off to his house to talk to his mother. Jack breathed a sigh of relief. He felt guilty for sending Jamie off like that, but he was freaking Jamie out too much. Or maybe that was just himself he was freaking out. Either way, it ought not to be done.

A nagging sense of worry plagued Jack as he stood up and walked away from the lake. He hadn't actually explained to Jamie what he had started the whole conversation to warn Jamie of, but he hoped Jamie would just trust him and avoid Father Time anyway. There was a reason he had demanded Jamie not seek the guy out, and it was a very good one too.

Jack Frost was over three hundred years old now, but it had only been about two hundred years since he'd died.

* * *

Jamie's parents were just boring and lame. They didn't believe in Jack Frost, which was sad enough as it was, but they also didn't know anything about Jackson Overland, which Jamie thought there was no excuse for. He found himself sitting in front of the computer, trying to find Jack online, but found he wasn't getting much success. This was annoying. Most of the sites that had information he was allowed to have were about Jackson Overlands who were currently living in the world as human beings, and anything that told him about people who had lived a long time ago required a credit card. It was tempting to snatch his mom's credit card and type in the number, but he feared she'd find out, and he knew the consequences of that: no dessert for a week, at least. The risk was too big. It wasn't worth it.

He boredly clicked through one link after another. There had to be something interesting on here that he didn't have to pay for. He didn't want to sit in front of the stupid screen all day when his friends were all outside, playing in the snow, and there was fun to be had. But he wanted to be able to show up and tell them something cool. Then again, maybe just telling them that Jack had once been human would be cool enough. Yeah, that would probably do it.

He was about to log off when a link caught his eye about the Overland name. It couldn't hurt to click on it and see if it said anything interesting, even though it probably wouldn't. When the screen loaded, he stared hard at the name, trying to figure out why they had written the name with a funny O with a slash through it. That was stupid.

Reading the page, however, revealed why they had written it that way, and he leaned back in his chair giggling. He was excited. There was something exciting to share with his friends after all.

Jack was Norwegian.

* * *

Had Tannie moved away from Burgess at some point? Or had something awful happened to her that would ensure she wasn't buried in her proper plot? Jack had scanned everywhere in the cemetery outside of Burgess, but no luck. She hadn't been buried next to mamma and pappa, which made matters difficult. He knew her first name of course, but there were so many Tanjas buried in this cemetery that he had no idea which was which.

He sat down by the nearest Tanja grave and held it protectively. It probably wasn't his Tannie, but it was the best he could do for now. He hoped she'd understand. Maybe she'd still be able to hear him from wherever she was, even though he was at the wrong grave. This one had died much too recently to be his sister.

"I'm sorry I wasn't there to watch you grow up, Tannie." He waited for a moment, almost hoping for a response, but wasn't a bit surprised when there was none. A couple snowflakes hissed past. He pretended that was a response from her, and continued talking.

"Did you grow up fine without me? Did you find a good man to take care of you?" He hugged the headstone tighter, then released it and sat back and glared at it. "He'd better not have been Dutch. I told you that you could marry anyone so long as he wasn't Dutch." Jack shook his finger warningly at the stone, received no response, then half-heartedly smiled. "You snarky little thing. You probably married a Dutchman just to spite me, didn't you?"

He stood up and dusted himself off, trying his best to look dignified after that unmanly show of emotion. "Thank you for listening to me, Stranger Tanja." He touched his staff to the snow covering the grave, and a bouquet of ice flowers sprung up. "Think you could pass these on to my sister when you see her? You can keep some for yourself too."

There was no response, so he leapt into the air and flew off to who knew where. It didn't much matter where he went, so long as he got away from Burgess for a little while.

Jamie had never met a Norwegian before, or so he had thought before he'd spilled all his new learning to his friends when he went out to play. Norwegians were some sort of cool, legendary things. They were always either gods, or vikings, or some sorts of weird creatures...

"But I'm Norwegian too."

And then there was Pippa.

Jamie's heart sunk to his feet. Pippa wasn't a god. She wasn't a viking so far as he knew. And he didn't think she was a weird creature, though he supposed she could be hiding something under her clothes. He didn't want to look under her clothes to find out though. Girls were gross.

"You are not Norwegian," said Jamie, hoping desperately to gain some of his Norwegian fantasies back. It was worth a shot.

"Yeah huh," said Pippa. "Lots of people in Burgess are Norwegian. A lot of the original settlers were Norwegian. It makes sense that Jack would be too if he was from this town."

Jamie wasn't happy, and he wanted to say something back to Pippa to teach her what for, but he couldn't think of anything to say that made sense. He didn't want to hurt her, especially if she really was Norwegian since Norwegians were cool, but he didn't want her to be Norwegian either, because Pippa wasn't cool enough for that.

"I wish I was Norwegian," said Monty, interrupting Jamie's thoughts, which he was glad for. "I'm just boring and Irish."

"Yeah," said Jamie, nodding with Monty on the issue. "My family's boring and Dutch."

"But the Dutch aren't boring," interrupted Pippa. "You guys have wooden shoes. And tulips."

"No, we don't," said Jamie. "My mom kills more bulbs than she grows. And I've got sneakers, see?" He jumped up and down a few times, enjoying the squeak of leather and rubber on the pavement, only to slip on a patch of black ice and fall down on his rump. That darn Jack Frost, throwing that black ice around on roads. He'd have to have a talk with Jack about that one of these days.

"Well," said Pippa, rebounding quickly from Jamie's little incident, "At least Monty's interesting. He's got leprechauns! How cool is that?"

"I don't even _believe_ in leprechauns, Pippa," said Monty, which only awarded him with a horrified reaction from Pippa.

"You believe in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, the Sandman, _and even_ Jack Frost, but you don't believe in leprechauns?"

"Nope."

Pippa put her hands on her hips and swung around irritably as she started walking down the street. "I don't know you guys. Bye!"

"Bye!" Jamie and the others waved to her. She'd be back. She always came back. Even if they couldn't produce a leprechaun.

Everyone stood around for the next couple awkward moments looking stupidly at each other. There was no denying this was stupid. This certainly felt stupid. They should do something other than look at each other stupidly, because being stupid didn't feel so good. "Hey, guys!" said Jamie suddenly, "Did I ever tell you about Father Time?"

"Father _What_?" said Cupcake. Jamie rubbed his hands evilly. This would be a fun story to tell.

* * *

"Hellooooooo?" said Jack into the chasm. Several hellos answered back, but they all sounded just like him. That was dull. He wanted to hear someone other than him talking to himself. He'd had quite enough of that during the past three hundred years, thank you very much. "Hey!" He knocked on a pillar with his staff, causing an echo to richochet off the walls. "Is anybody home?"

What he was doing here, he couldn't say. He knew better. He had just warned Jamie to stay away from the guy. Yet here he was, bothering Father Time again. It seemed he just couldn't help himself. He should just go right then, before Father Time had the chance to wake up and find him there, or he'd get thrown back a year _again. _It would mean he wouldn't be able to talk to Jamie for a year, which would really suck, even though Jamie wouldn't notice the difference. He would just wake up the next day to a one-year-wiser Jack Frost.

"Time? Are you here?" _Jack, you're being an idiot. Just turn around and head back. Do it quickly and he won't see you._ He stepped into the corridor. Time had to be around here somewhere. His footsteps clanked on the heavy marble floor, quite the accomplishment for someone who usually walked on his tiptoes. The ceiling of the place arched into a huge dome, which took any tiny sound and reflected it back a hundredfold.

_Jack, what are you doing? You're going to get sent back a year again. Do you want to be separated from Jamie for that long?_ He shook his head to the annoying little inner voice. No, he didn't want to be separated from Jamie for that long, but it was like his feet wouldn't listen to him. Or maybe his heart wasn't obeying his brain. Some part of him wasn't obeying another part of him, and so he wasn't leaving the place, and he was so disappointed in himself.

_It's your funeral, Jack._

That just angered him. Inner voice or not, it had no place talking to him like that. "Look, he's not going to kill me, okay? He can't. All he can do is boot me back in time a year, okay? So shut up."

"And who might ye be talking to, my son?"

Jack started and twirled around to look into the face of the old man Time. He didn't look pleased, though he never did. Not when Jack was around, anyway. Jack must have aroused him out of a deep sleep, since he looked a bit disheveled with his hair all mussed up and his cloak slightly lopsided. A sleepy Time was not really a wise thing to wake up.

Jack waved a tiny little wave, smiling awkwardly at the old man. "Um, just talking to-myself?"

Time snorted. "Ye carry on conversations with yerself. Methinks it be the beginnings of insanity."

Jack laughed awkwardly and took a step back. His rebellious resolve to stay and do whatever was slipping away, and he now thought that leaving might be a good idea after all. He really didn't want to get catapulted back in time again and have to avoid himself for a year to avoid freaking his other self out. It wasn't fun. "Yes," he said, "Insane. Yes, I'm insane. So I'll just be going now..."

Time stepped toward Jack and thrust his lantern in Jack's face. "What is your purpose, Jack Frost? Why do ye keep coming here?"

Jack's hands waved around, trying to answer the question, but Time was looking to Jack's mouth for an answer, and the mouth was having trouble finding an answer. This was so frustrating. Time needed to just look at Jack's hands for the answer. They obviously thought they knew what to say.

Time put down his lantern, a gesture that Jack hadn't seen him do before, and he raised an eyebrow and watched Time curiously. What was the old codger up to?

"We will find what brings ye here, Jack Frost, and we will find what shall make ye avoid this place forevermore."

If that didn't sound ominous, Jack didn't know what did. Just that saying alone was enough to make Jack want to at least try to stay away from the creep forever. He launched himself into the air to leave, when a strong wind rushed into the room and every last doorway and window shut and locked itself with heavy wooden doors. Jack hadn't even been aware that those doorways and windows had doors. Now he was trapped inside, and Time could have his way with him, but why?

Jack came down and landed softly on his feet, and held his staff protectively in front of his body. He may have annoyed Time one too many times, but it had never gone beyond minor annoyance. Time was taking this too far, and Jack wasn't going to go down without a fight.

Time raised an hourglass over his head, and Jack flinched. He knew what Time could do with hourglasses, and he didn't like it much. "What brings ye here, Jack Frost?" Time slammed the hourglass on the floor, shattering it into a million pieces. That was new. Normally Time threw hourglasses at him.

Dust from the sand rose up from the remains of the hourglass and formed into a vapor, which gradually took some sort of shape. It was difficult to make out at first, but he could definitely see two figures in the vapor. One of the figures then disappeared, and the remaining one cleared up and shouted, "Jack!"

Jack gasped and cupped his hand across his mouth. It was Tannie.

Time looked up at him with an unblinking eye, sending shivers down Jack's spine. It took a special kind of chill to make Jack Frost feel cold. "Ye were to leave the past behind, Jack Frost. Ye were to move on, as yer family has moved on, but ye have not done so."

"I'm sorry!" said Jack, and he lost his balance momentarily, so he swayed on his staff for support. "I won't do it again, I swear. I-I shouldn't still be clinging to the past. I know it-I just-just let me go, and I promise, I won't be back."

"No, ye won't be back," said Time, who then picked up another hourglass and eyed Jack with a square gaze, "because this ends now."

He then threw the hourglass at Jack, who tried to duck out of the way, but it was futile. He had never been able to dodge one of Time's hourglasses before, and he didn't this time. The hourglass grew in size until it was about eight feet tall, and then smacked down over Jack, trapping Jack inside.

"Farewell, Jack Frost," said Time, "I shall hope we never meet again."

The timepiece then took flight through some sort of weird dimension full of strange lights streaming by and the sounds of ticking clocks. It was exhilarating going through this place the first few times it had happened, but now Jack was just sick of it. Why wouldn't Time just leave him alone? Well, maybe Jack should have just left Time alone in the first place. It made more sense that way.

The hourglass shuttered as it hit ground, and then it poofed away into sand, leaving Jack lying on a snowy hill, atop a pile of melting sand. Father Time had to be the only person in existence who could create sand that could melt. The Sandman might be jealous if he knew it did that, but he'd never breathed a word about it to anyone. Not even to Jamie. Falling for this trick this many times was kind of embarrassing, and he didn't like rehashing the details.

Jack sat up and shook sand out of his ears. At least Time had had the sense to send him to a time and place that was frozen over, since Jack really didn't handle heat well, but he still didn't know where he was. Or when he was, for that matter. He leapt up and slid down the hillside, then glided off to the nearest town to investigate and find out just how many days he would have to wait to see Jamie again.

He landed in the town, and ran around looking for something to identify the time or the place, but this town was being rather stingy on that information, which stunk. Something nagged at the back of his head, but he brushed it off. It was probably just his brain trying to say he'd seen the town before, but of course he had. He'd seen every town in the world that was capable of freezing over, so what would be special about this one in particular?

His feet seemed to agree with the nagging brain, and they started to walk of their own accord down a familiar feeling path to a place that was who knew where. Stupid feet. They needed to learn that they didn't have brains in them and stop thinking for themselves. That was the brain's job. And the stupid brain needed to stop encouraging them or they would never learn.

All the chiding of his feet did nothing though, and they continued to meander wherever they wished until he found himself in front of a little house. The moment he saw the house, Jack started to shiver, and his hands froze over. He didn't have that happen often, but it seemed to happen whenever his hands should have gotten clammy, which he seemed to be incapable of doing as a winter sprite. He clamped his hands into fists and shattered the ice on his hands, then cautiously stepped up to the window and peered in.

A family was gathered around each other, clutching each other and mourning. Fear etched up his skin as suspicion of what had happened began to seep in. Surely it couldn't be. Time wouldn't go that low, would he?

The girl looked up briefly to rub her eyes, sniff, and then cry out, "Jack!" before going back to bowing her head with her parents. Jack turned his back to the window and allowed his feet to slide as he sank down to the ground.

Time really had sunk that low. He was back in Burgess, just after he had died.

_**There you go. I have no idea how this story will be received on fanfiction right now since I barely know the fandom as of yet, but feel free to tell me if you wish. Say whatever you want, be it yay, nay, or wanting me to jump in front of a truck because you hate my story. I've seen it all by this point, and frankly find flames rather funny. So say what you like, and I'll try to upload the next chapter as soon as I can. :)**_


	2. Chapter 2

_**Okay, I managed to get another chapter up. Tricky, tricky thing. Still dealing with a bit of a writer's block, which is why I came back to fanfiction instead of working on the stories I'm planning to publish. Fanfiction's expectations are a lot more lax, so I can just WRITE, haha.**_

_**Anyway, I hope this chapter is good. I'm always a little self-conscious about my chapters, no matter how much I practice. :P And this story is haaaaaaaaaard. Especially since my traffic stats says I have Norwegian readers now. Oi... sorry! I know next to nothing about Norway. Don't hurt me! *dodges whatever the crazy readers want to give* It's okay to laugh at the ignorant American girl. I totally understand your need to do that, haha.**_

_**Hope you enjoy this chapter anyway. It was hard to write, for some reason, but I got it done today at least. ;)**_

_**Disclaimer: I do not own -coughcoughackhack- Rise of the Guardians. That still sounds so strange to me after 50-some stories of my saying that I don't own Fullmetal Alchemist. Man, is that just weird, haha.**_

Well, that was stupid of him, not thinking to just ask his teacher about Jackson Overland. Jamie hated to admit that Cupcake had been smart about that suggestion. She wasn't always the brightest, but he dared not say that to her face.

First thing in the morning, Jamie raced through his morning routines and bolted out the door. He wanted to be the first person to show up in class so that he'd have his teacher's attention. She might be a little suspicious that there was something wrong, since Jamie normally slacked off, but he was willing to deal with that for one day, especially if he could actually get some of the information he wanted. Proving Jack was real so other people would believe in him sounded like the most awesome thing in the world.

"Jamie!" said the teacher upon seeing his entry into the classroom. "You're awfully early. Is your mother running errands today?"

"No," said Jamie. He walked to school every day anyway, so whether his mom were to run errands or not was a moot point, but he supposed letting the teacher think his mom drove him there might get her to be a little less suspicious of him. "I actually had something I wanted to ask you."

"Oh, really?" His teacher set aside the papers she'd been grading and laced her fingers together so she could listen better to Jamie. He approached her desk and rested his lunchbox on it.

"I just found out that Overland Lake is named after a guy named Jackson Overland," said Jamie in one breath. He must have sounded really stupid, but the teacher merely nodded.

"Yes," she said.

He let his breath out and began to speak more slowly. "Do you have any information on him? I-I can't find anything."

The teacher pursed her lips for a moment as she silently thought. Jamie's knees started to shake, and he reached down a hand to try to hold them in place, but that didn't work too well. "Is this a research project?" she said.

"I guess," said Jamie, though he was a little nervous about saying even that. Would he get in trouble if he was researching something without it being a school assignment?

"Did someone assign it to you?"

"No." Jamie combed through his hair, messing up the job his mother had just tried to do before he left. He couldn't help his hair always being a mess, he was too nervous. "I just-I just want to know-stuff."

The teacher chuckled and a tiny smile played on her face. Hopefully that was a good sign and not an indication that she was about to eat him. That wouldn't be a very good thing. Teachers could be kind of evil at times.

"How about this, Jamie? If I help you get information about this Jackson Overland person, you bring me a four page report on him, and I'll give you extra credit."

"Okay," said Jamie, and finally the teacher was satisfied, so she got up and left the room, gesturing for him to follow. He wasn't so sure he liked the idea of being required to do the project on Jack, but he _was_ doing it anyway. His grades had been slipping for a while, so maybe it was a good thing. And it was the only way he knew of to get information on human Jack without it costing him his dessert.

She led him into the library, and down the aisle into the dark side of the library where no student goes without being dragged there kicking and screaming. The books were all old and boring and colorless, and the teachers all liked them for some reason. Growing up sucked.

The teacher pulled one of the old, colorless books down from a shelf and flipped through it. Jamie grimaced. She wasn't going to make him read that whole giant of a book, was she? It was like an inch wide, at least. Caleb once knocked his brother out with one of those things. They weren't pretty.

"This is the history of Burgess," said the teacher, "And the part about Jackson Overland starts on this page." She pointed to a spot where Jack's story started, then bookmarked the page, snapped the book shut, and handed the book to Jamie. If it was just one little piece of a book that only talked about Jack, then perhaps he could handle reading it. Perhaps.

She then showed him how to search through newspaper archives for a story that he wanted, which the school had apparently acquired quite a collection of newspapers, and there were indeed a couple small articles that mentioned Jackson Overland or the origins of the name of Overland Lake.

Lastly, she introduced him to something he found quite fascinating. "The county library can give you access to immigration records. I believe Jackson Overland immigrated from Norway?"

Jamie nodded, but didn't say a word. For some reason, when he'd learned that Jack was Norwegian, it hadn't crossed his mind that Jack might be _really_ Norwegian, not just a descendant of people who had come from Norway. Jack _was_ the people who had come from Norway, and he wasn't sure what to think of that. Jack didn't have an accent as far as he knew. Did Norwegians not have accents?

"Then go to the county library after school and ask the librarian how to look up immigration records. She'll be sure to help you find what you're looking for."

"Thank you," said Jamie, and he and his teacher hurried back to class. His head was spinning, trying to process all this stuff, and eager to dig into the information he now had. He shoved all the research materials away in his desk and tried to listen as the teacher started the class, but he found he couldn't concentrate. Something bothered him, and it just wouldn't leave him alone.

Why _didn't_ Jack have an accent?

* * *

Tannie, mamma, and pappa were in that house crying their eyes out, and Jack was powerless to stop them. He pulled his knees up to his chest and hid his face. They didn't believe in him anymore. What could he do? How could he show them that he was alright and they should really just stop crying already?

"It was my fault! It was all my fault that Jack perished!"

"No, Tanja, do not berate yourself for this. You are but a child."

Jack snorted and refused to look up into the window to see the speakers. He'd forgotten how corny the old language sounded. Perhaps it hadn't been as corny to him back when he had talked like this, but watching the language evolve made anything old sound corny.

But mamma was right. Tannie was just a child. She shouldn't beat herself up over this. It wasn't her fault that she hadn't known what to do. Jack should have known how to handle things better and gotten them both out of that situation, but he hadn't. At least he hadn't botched things up so badly that the both of them wound up dead.

He stood back up, looked longingly at the house, and then turned and walked away. He couldn't stand to just sit there and listen to them suffer when there was nothing he could do to stop it. Well, there probably was something he could do, or why would Time have sent him here? But he didn't know what he was capable of yet, and he had to go off somewhere to think. Or sulk. One or the other.

Sitting around in the snow and thinking wasn't as appealing to him as it normally was. Jamie wasn't going to just run up to him and start talking him out of his stupor anytime soon, and somehow that knowledge just made the action of sitting and thinking so much less exciting. Jamie wasn't even alive yet. Now he had Tannie around, but not Jamie. Why did he have to switch one loved one out for another?

A squirrel darted out of nowhere, leapt through him without knowing what it had done, and scurried up a tree. Jack shook his fist at the squirrel for its obnoxious antics. He was the one who was supposed to be the one going around causing trouble, not random squirrels who ran through invisible people without apology.

He lowered his fist and sighed. Tannie would have laughed so hard if she'd been able to see all of that. She loved animals so much, and she loved how easily riled Jack would get about the stupidest things. Her laugh was similar to Jamie's in many ways, just a cute little laugh that he had lived to hear.

He grabbed a small mass of snow, then shaped it into a squirrel. If Tannie were here to see what he would do next, he could only imagine her squeals of glee at realizing what he was capable of now. He blew on the little snow squirrel, and it sprung to life. It sniffed around in Jack's hands for a couple moments, and then seemed to realize it was in the hands of a squirrel hater, and so it tore out of his hands and up the same tree the real squirrel had run up just a few moments before. A bit of cackling from up in the tree hinted to Jack that the real squirrel wasn't too fond of Jack sending ice monsters after it, and Jack winced as snowflakes fell out of the tree. Evil squirrel.

His snow critters may never have lasted long, but they did give him an idea. If it worked for Jamie, who said it wouldn't work for Tannie? But he had to come up with some clever way to dress it up so she'd know it was him. Though when he thought of "dressing it up", he just pictured animals in tuxedos, which he knew wouldn't work very well. She loved wild animals, but not when they hosted black tie events. They just had to be good old, ordinary animals.

He knew what to do, but it meant he had to wait until she went to bed. Children were usually more likely to perceive him when they were alone and sleeping in their beds. Adults were just too "realistic" about things and had the tendency to kill whatever connection they were going to form. Sitting around until she was in bed was going to be very hard, but he would do it somehow, even if it meant counting all the snowflakes at his feet to distract himself.

After he'd counted about ten thousand snowflakes, he decided he should go check on Tannie, and sure enough, she was in bed, and the parents were not in the room with her. This was perfect. He tugged on the window, but alas, it was stuck. Since when did Tannie actually lock her window? Had she gotten paranoid after he died? He couldn't get in unless there was an open window or door for him to go through.

This wasn't about to stop the great Jack Frost. Oh no. If he couldn't open the window, he'd make her open it for him. Jack reached down and grabbed a handful of snow and threw a snowball at the window. Tannie jolted upright in bed, and Jack smirked. He'd definitely gotten her attention. Now to convince her to open the window.

He arranged several snowballs in a row, and pelted them at the window in quick succession. He wouldn't stop until she opened the window, and he was pretty sure that Tannie was figuring that out about then. This was very Jack-ish behavior, and no doubt that would be the first thing she'd think of, even if she thought there was no way her pesky brother could ever throw snowballs at her ever again.

Tannie threw back her blankets, and angry little footsteps came up to the window. She threw the window open and called out, "Jack, stop it!" Jack laughed and threw one last snowball, which hit her in the face and made her tumble backward onto the floor. He hopped up through her window and landed softly beside her.

Her hands covered her face, and her shoulders rose and fell. She was crying. Jack wasn't sure why if she had known he was out there. She shouldn't be grieving over a brother who wasn't dead, so what was she doing? He placed his hand on her shoulder. "Did I hit you too hard, Tannie?"

She shivered, but that was the only response he got from her. He removed his hand from her shoulder, and she stopped shivering, except for when a wind gust came in through the window. She wasn't moving to close that, and she didn't have a surplus of heat to just release to the world like the people two hundred years into the future. That wasn't very smart of her to just waste what heat she had. Jack went and closed Tannie's window for her, and Tannie looked up at the window, startled about something.

Jack stood looking at her for a solid minute, then waved his hand in front of her face. "Tannie? Hello? Is anybody home?" No reaction. Jack leaned back against the wall and sighed. So Tannie really didn't believe in him at all. He had hoped she would believe at least a little bit since she had known him personally in his previous lifetime, but it seemed that was just too big of a stretch for her little mind to comprehend without a little help.

"Alright, Tannie, sit back and watch the show." Jack thrust his staff against the floor, causing the whole floor to frost over within seconds. Tannie shrieked and jumped up onto the bed, but continued to watch what was happening. Jack couldn't make out whether she was scared or fascinated, but he could work with whatever he had.

One by one, animals of various sorts popped out of the frost over the floor. A squirrel hopped up onto Tannie's bed and rubbed against her hand, which made her jerk her hand away. The squirrel had to have felt pretty cold to her. A rabbit hopped around the room, looking for snow carrots. A doe came up and licked Tannie's hair, which made her giggle and fall back onto her bed. Jack smiled. He'd thought he'd never be able to hear that laugh again. Coming back in time like this was worth it just for that.

"For you, my little dabba dabba dove." Jack stretched his palms out toward Tannie, and a snow dove formed in them, then took flight and sailed toward Tannie. She excitedly reached out to grab it, only to draw her hand back once she was reminded of how cold it was. It seemed she kept forgetting, since she wasn't accustomed to being visited by a winter sprite who could just make these things look real.

The dove landed on Tannie's shoulder. "Now for the real magic," said Jack, and he touched the dove with his staff and began humming the tune to the lullaby he had always sung to her. The dove took the tune and projected it through itself as though it was singing to the girl itself, even though its life force was only on loan from Jack. Tannie's face froze into an expression that was difficult to read. Was it fear she was feeling, or something else?

She lasted through the verse twice before she lost control and tore out of her bedroom, leaving a baffled Jack to follow her. What was the matter with his sister? That song hadn't suddenly gotten scary to her, had it?

"Mamma! Pappa!" She ran and knocked on her parents' door furiously. "I think I've seen an apparition. What do I do?"

Jack sighed and leaned against a wall and stared sadly at the girl. He'd quite forgotten the way people acted back in this day and age, freaking out over the slightest things. Had he been that bad? He really hoped he hadn't been, but he probably had. Most people from this time period were easily spooked.

Pappa came out of the room with a candle in his hand, and he led mamma by the hand. "Where did you see this apparition, Tanja?"

"In my room." She led them back to the bedroom and pointed at the floor. "See? The floor is frozen over."

Mamma covered her mouth with her hand to cover the shock. "Marcus..."

"Camilla, take Tanja and get out." He thrust his hand to the door. "Now."

She looked like she was about to protest, but then thought better of it and nodded. "Of course, Marcus. Come, Tanja. Put on your winter clothes."

"But mamma..."

"Do as your father says!"

That allowed no room for objection, but all this fuss annoyed Jack. He had only wanted to get through to his sister. He hadn't suspected that she might run off and drag their parents into the whole thing before he could even get through to her. They were bound to be strong disbelievers in this sort of thing, especially pappa. He had a reputation to uphold.

It only took a few minutes for the women to dress for the cold weather, and then they were out the door. Jack took one last look at his pappa frantically searching through the room and trying to figure out what was going on, then he rolled his eyes and followed after the two women. They would be much easier to get through to than the hard-headed man of the family.

Jack eavesdropped on the two for a couple minutes and realized that mamma had the intention of going straight to the priest and begging for help. He sighed angrily. This was unnecessary. He was only trying to communicate with his family in any way he could, which unfortunately had to involve cold and ice. He had no other way to interact with the physical realm in a way humans could understand, but he had to find a way to stop them from seeking the priest, or he'd really have no chance of getting through to them.

He swirled his staff in the air a few times, and within minutes he had conjured up a strong enough storm to stop most people in their tracks. Mamma continued to try and push through it for a few minutes, but she soon realized that there was no way to get through this. Jack had seen to it that no one would be able to find their way to anywhere through this haze. If they couldn't get anywhere, they couldn't get to the priest's house.

Mamma dropped to her knees and clutched Tannie and began to cry helplessly. This was not the right reaction. Jack wanted to kick himself. How was he to get through to these two without terrifying them? First things first, he had to get them out of the storm so no harm would come to them. He reached out and grabbed an arm on each of them, then launched himself into the sky, carrying both of them with him.

The two were surprisingly quiet while in the air, too amazed at what was happening to make useless noises. Jack was grateful for that reaction, but it wouldn't do him much good in terms of communication. He set them down gently on a hill outside of town, then landed behind them. The storm was still raging in the town, but out here, the wind was nothing more than a slight breeze. He hadn't felt like creating a huge storm just to stop them from going somewhere.

Fear showed on mamma's face, but she held her own strongly, probably for Tannie's sake, so as not to let her suffer more than she'd already suffered since Jack died. This was all a bit much, and Jack was only making it worse, which made him feel terrible.

"Thank the Lord, we are safe." Mamma dropped to her knees, trembling, and Tannie placed a hand on her shoulder to attempt to reassure her. It hardly seemed to work, but Jack couldn't fault little Tannie for trying to help her mamma to feel better.

"How did that happen, mamma?" She knelt down next to mamma so she could see her better. "How did we fly out here? Did we get saved by an angel?"

"That is probably what happened, dear one." Mamma took Tannie's hands in her own. "The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear him and delivereth them."

So now Jack was an angel. This was getting interesting. First he was a ghost, then he was an apparition, and now he was an angel. It seemed people had no shortage of supernatural labels to slap onto him. He was going to be called the devil next, at this rate.

"Why do you suppose that storm came up so suddenly?" asked Tannie.

"The devil did not want us to seek out the help of God."

Yep, he was the devil now too.

There was no point in waiting for them to sort out precisely which supernatural forces were at work here when all their guesses were wrong. His hand got bored waiting around for something to happen, and it decided to do something to make things get more interesting. Before his head realized what his hand was doing, a snowball had been launched at both Tannie and mamma, hitting each of them squarely in the back of the head.

"Jackson, that is quite enough!"

"Mamma..."

The two of them now stared at each other intensely while occasionally glancing sideways to try and identify the source of the ominous snowballs. Not finding the source, Tannie leaned forward and said, "Mamma, why did you call for Jack?"

Mamma covered her face with her hands. She looked ashamed of herself for having let her tongue slip like that. "I do not-It was a habit, Tanja. Jackson always tried to annoy us with snowballs."

"I know," said Tannie. "Someone threw snowballs at my window tonight, and I thought it was Jack too." She turned and looked around, and squinted when she looked at the area where Jack stood. Did Tannie see him? He waved excitedly, but she turned away and looked back at mamma. "Can Jack still throw snowballs at us?"

"No, Tanja." Mamma shook her head. "Jackson is gone. He is not coming back."

"I know, mamma, what could he be the angel that just saved us? He did become an angel, did he not?"

Well, that was new. At least Tannie was getting closer to the truth than she had been all night. She might be able to see him before too long if she kept it up, so long as he could keep their crazy parents from freaking out and going to the priest at the first opportunity before they even took the time to listen.

Mamma patted Tannie on the knee. "He may have been our guardian angel tonight. You could be right, Tanja."

Tannie didn't miss a beat. "Then couldn't he still throw snowballs at us?"

The look on mamma's face was hilarious. Her eyebrows were at different levels of height, and she looked like she was trying to figure out whether Tannie was hallucinating from eating a rotten batch of fish. "Why would he want to continue to throw snowballs at us?"

"To say _hellooooooo!" _Jack lobbed another snowball at mamma, but missed her that time. His aim was getting off. He must have been getting too emotional and losing his concentration.

Tannie blinked a couple times, then turned to mamma and said, "To say hello?"

Jack's knees gave way, and he fell down into the snow. Had Tannie heard him just then? Was he finally getting through?

"Tannie! Tannie! Can you hear me?" He waved his hands in front of her face and danced around her like a lunatic. Anything that would garner attention was worth the effort. "Can you see me? Do you notice anything?"

A slight chuckle escaped from Tannie, and mamma raised an eyebrow at her, ensuring that Tannie would have to explain that little chuckle, lest she be punished for it later. "Ah, I was just-It felt like Jack was dancing around us just now, being silly."

"Yes!" Jack pumped his fist. It may have been only a minor victory, but a victory was a victory. Tannie had at least called what he'd been doing accurately. She must have been starting to believe.

"Jackson may indeed still be with us, Tanja." She pulled Tannie close and rubbed her head. "If he is, he would not like to see you crying over him. If he is with us now, you must cease your tears, or he may leave."

"I will not shed a single tear! I promise, mamma!" She sat up and rubbed at her eyes as though to make sure there wasn't any chance that any tears could sneak up and betray her.

Jack sighed and knelt down next to Tannie. "I won't leave you if you cry, Tannie. Mamma's just being mean. I'll stay right by your side forever. Heaven knows I have nowhere else to go for the next two hundred years."

Tannie sighed happily, while made Jack smile. She may not realize all that she was picking up from Jack, but she was doing a pretty good job. Another questioning glance from mamma, so Tannie had to speak her mind again. How was Tannie going to explain what she had just picked up? Maybe he shouldn't say so much to her when mamma was around, but it was just so hard to resist when she was actually responding somewhat.

"Mamma, I think it was Jack who visited me in my room tonight. There was a snow dove that materialized and sang to me 'Dabba Dabba Dove'."

"You believe it was Jackson singing you one last lullaby," said mamma. Jack looked at her, slightly nervous that she wanted to tear Tannie down for what she was starting to believe, but mamma was smiling. He smiled too. This was good. Things were going slower than he wanted them to, but they were still going. He was getting through. He was reuniting with his family.

"Let us go home, Tanja." Mamma got on her feet. "The storm has died down by now."

Jack smacked himself for forgetting to keep the storm going, but at least mamma had said she wanted to go home rather than go back to the priest. She must have been starting to believe too.

He followed them home, watched them explain what happened to pappa, who wasn't pleased over the situation but accepted it, and then followed Tannie back into her bedroom.

As soon as she was comfortably in bed, he knelt beside her and said, "Tannie, can you hear me?"

"Mmmm," she said in her sleepy voice, "a little."

Jack grinned from ear to ear. That was a _direct_ response, the first he'd had from her all day. Maybe come this time the next day, she would be able to see him just as well as Jamie did. He reached over and pet her head. "I want to tell you a story, Tannie, about a person named Jack Frost."

A yawn, and then, "Alright."

Jack smiled and leaned closer. This had better work. It had to.

_**There's the chapter. Hope you liked it, but feel free to tell me your thoughts on it. I try to keep a sort of "open door" policy with my readers. If they have suggestions, I listen, and will incorporate some of their suggestions when they seem usable. So if you have ideas, or criticism, or even just want to chat, feel free to review, PM me, or even tweet me. I'm liz_ashford there, so go ahead and seek me out. I respond to most tweets directed at me. :)**_

_**Anyway, I'll get to working on the next chapter soon. Thanks for reading, and I hope to see you back here soon!**_


	3. Chapter 3

_**So, here's another chapter for you peeps! Sorry I took a little longer to get it out today. It's hard writing with a headache, but I managed to do it eventually, so yeah! I'm hoping to write at least one chapter a day until I get it done, but we'll see how that goes. I used to regularly write about twice this much in half the time I've been taking to write these chapters, so hopefully writing this story will help me get back into the swing of things. We shall see.**_

_**Anyway, rather than wasting your time with a huge author's note, here's the next chapter of Dabba Dabba Dove. Enjoy! :)**_

_**Disclaimer: I'm gonna say it, and I'm not going to freak out this time. I do not own Rise of the Guardians. (*screams*) Well, I'm getting better, anyway. :P**_

"Dæbbe, dæbbe dua  
Mor di var ei frua.  
Far din var ein herremann  
Bror din var ein spellemann  
Spelle ikkje for lengge.  
Strengan koste pænge,  
Pængan nedi skrinet  
Skrinet nedi kista.  
Kista uti Amsterdam i Holland."

Tannie sighed contentedly in her sleep at the conclusion of the song. Jack petted his sister's head and smiled sadly at the sleepy little thing. She could hear him in her sleep now, but would she be able to hear him once she woke up? He had started getting through to her just a bit during the evening, before she fell asleep, but that could have been the adrenaline working in his favor. He didn't want to scare her every time he wanted attention. He loved his Tannie too much.

After a while, he decided he should probably stop being so clingy and just let the poor girl sleep, so he stopped petting her head and moved to stand up, but her hand shot out and grabbed his collar. "Jack..." said Tannie in her sleepy little voice. "Please do not leave me."

Jack's expression softened, and he knelt back by the bed. He had thought that he was just making her cold by touching her so much and hovering so close to her, but she seemed to be just as clingy as he was. Perhaps she was more clingy. She had just lost her brother, whereas he'd had three hundred years to accept the idea.

"I'm right here, Tannie," he said. "I can stay right here all night if you want."

"Mmhmm." She nodded in her sleep. The little thing made Jack want to melt at the sight of such cuteness. Was is safe for a winter sprite to allow someone to melt his heart? Well, he supposed he was going to find out, because he wasn't about to leave Tannie's side now that he finally had her back and she wanted him back just as much. If melting his heart could kill him though, he had probably already died a long time ago from some of Jamie's antics.

"Then I'll stay here all night," he said, and he risked a kiss on her forehead. She shivered a little, but that was all she did, so it seemed to be fine. That was a relief. He could still kiss his sister goodnight, so long as he was careful. "Goodnight, Angel."

"'Night."

Jack sighed happily. This night would be long and a bit dull, yet still perfect in its own way. He wished he could keep this moment forever.

* * *

"Overland Lake is named after a young Norwegian immigrant named Jackson Overland. Local legend has it that Overland and his sister were skating on the frozen lake when Overland fell through a patch of thin ice and perished. Some accounts state that Overland managed to rescue his sister from the same fate before succumbing to the ice."

That wasn't a very long entry at all, and Jamie had to admit he was a bit disappointed. Even if this was one of those dreaded books that kids tried to avoid at all costs, the least the book could do was give him more than a paragraph about Jack.

At least it did prove that Jack's story was true. Some of his peers had been starting to accuse him of being crazy. Now he could shove this information in his face to prove that, yes, Jack had indeed lived. There was documented proof of that. He had no idea how to prove that Jackson Overland had turned into Jack Frost, but at least one part of the story was proven right.

There was a picture of Jack and his family pasted beside the small article. It wasn't a very good picture. He suspected it might not even be a picture at all, since it looked more like a cartoon. But it couldn't be a cartoon, since Mom had said that cartoons were a pretty new thing. Maybe that was a painting. It seemed kind of stupid to make a painting when it was easy enough to just snap a picture and save the trouble. He never understood why historical people didn't just use cameras. He'd always wanted to know exactly what Columbus looked like, but the dummy had forgotten to pack his camera on the voyage to America.

Jamie scratched his head as he stared at the painting-picture. The only person in that picture with white hair was the dad, and his hair was only half white. The other half was a boring dark, like everything else in the black and white picture. Jack's icy white hair should have been easy to spot though. That should have come out white in a black and white picture, but they all had dark hair.

A switch flipped in Jamie's brain and his eyes grew wide. Could Jack have looked _different_ before he became Jack Frost? Why would the Man in the Moon have changed how Jack looked, unless Jack was ugly before?

Jamie searched the picture, trying to find Jack, and he zeroed in on the older boy. If he pictured that boy with white hair instead of the stupid dark hair he portrayed, then yes, he could easily imagine that boy as Jack. He had the same stupid grin as Jack too. Yep, the Man in the Moon had done the right thing. Brown hair was stupid and ugly, and it didn't belong on anybody who was cool.

The caption beneath the picture read, "Left to right: Marcus Overland, Jackson Overland, Tanja Overland, Camilla Overland." These captions were always so confusing, since they acted like everyone was standing in a straight line and you were just somehow supposed to know what they meant even when the people weren't standing in a straight line.

But in this case, Jamie thought he could guess. Jack had mentioned a "Tannie" before. That was probably short for Tanja. How was that name pronounced anyway? Oh well, he could just pronounce it the way Jack did for now. Tannie worked well enough. This "Tannie" person was supposed to be Jack's sister, which meant that it couldn't be the lady sitting in the front. She looked way too old to be his sister, so Tannie must have been the girl standing beside the dark-haired Jack.

It was weird. She almost looked familiar somehow, but Jamie couldn't say why. He certainly couldn't have ever met her. She'd have been a very old lady by the time he was born. How long ago did Jack say he'd lived? Two hundred years? She'd have been a very, _very_ old lady.

The familiarity was strange though. Maybe Dad would know where he'd seen that face. He shoved the book into his backpack and bundled up to go home. Dad wouldn't be home for a few hours yet anyway, but he wanted to have some time to try and find Jack or play with his friends. Either task would be fun.

As soon as he stepped out of school, Jamie knew something was different, and he scratched his head, trying to figure out what was bothering him. He couldn't think very well, so he took his coat off to cool down a little, since he could never think when it was hot, and he threw his coat over his arm and continued walking down the street.

A couple blocks later, he stepped into a pile of slush, which splattered up onto his pants and trickled down into his shoes. He hated when that happened. Every spring, he had to deal with the slush everywhere while the snow disappeared and the flowers started thinking it might be a good idea to pop up.

Something clicked then. This was the middle of December, not the middle of spring. Why was the snow melting all of a sudden? Jack loved playing around in Burgess this time of year. If it wasn't cold in Burgess in December, then for some reason, Jack wasn't in Burgess, but why? What had made him leave? And when would he get back?

Jamie picked up his pace and ran the rest of the way home. Slosh, slosh, slosh went his feet, which only fueled his worries. He hoped one of his friends might have spoken to Jack more recently than he had, or that Jack might have left a message of some sort at home for him, and Jamie wanted to get back so he could find out what was going on. This wasn't normal behavior for Jack, and he was scared.

"Where are you, Jack?" Jamie said to the wind, but as the wind wasn't Jack, it refused to answer, so Jamie just continued to run.

* * *

Tanja arose the next morning with freezing hands and dried tears on her face. It had felt like she had held someone's hand the whole night through, a very cold hand, but a hand. And her brother's voice had spoken to her. The voice had said things that were probably nonsensical, but it had indeed been her brother's voice. And Jack had the tendency to be nonsensical as it was. She felt like she could still believe that Jack was around even if she could not believe all the words he said to her. He enjoyed playing tricks. Even in death, he enjoyed his tomfoolery.

There was something hanging on the corner of Tanja's vision that she could not see whenever she turned to look at it directly. She had heard of certain kinds of spirits that could only be seen out of the corners of one's eyes, but she could not understand why there would be such a spirit in her bedroom. She believed angels surrounded her in her sleep, and that her brother was among them and possibly still keeping watch as she was awake, but angels were not the same thing. Folks claimed to see the spirits of nature out of the corners of their eyes, while angels usually appeared fully visible when one saw them, but in disguise.

Tanja journeyed to the dining area after she had dressed herself, and mamma set a bowl of steaming porridge at her place. "I had such an interesting dream last night, mamma."

"What did you dream, child?" Mamma sat down across from the table to listen to Tanja's story, but pappa stood up and left the room. He never much enjoyed listening to Tanja's dreams, but it did not matter. He had work to do outside of the house, and he could not be troubled with the affairs of womenfolk.

"I dreamt of Jack, mamma, and he told me a story."

Mamma seemed hesitant to speak, lest she say anything to encourage the child in foolish fantasies, but her desire to believe prevailed overall. "What story did he tell you?"

Tanja took a couple spoonfuls of her porridge before answering, as it was important to think before speaking. "He told me the story of a person called Jack Frost, mamma."

"Who is Jack Frost?"

"I think he is the guardian angel of winter," said Tanja. She had a flutter of a smile remembering the way Jack had talked in her dream, but she dared not show her feelings too strongly. She did not wish to have her hopes crushed if she seemed too eager. "I did not hear all of his story, as I fell too deeply asleep, but I think I have figured out why he told me this story."

"And why would that be, Tanja?"

Tanja beamed at her mamma. This was the part of the story she had liked the most, and she hoped her mamma would agree with her. "I believe that God saw how Jack gave his life to save mine from the ice, and so He made Jack the guardian angel of winter and changed his name to Jack Frost."

Mamma did not seem to know what to say to that, and she held her face in an expression of intense thought. Tanja did not know whether mamma was going to accept or reject her theory, but she clearly would have liked to believe her son had been rewarded with such an important task. She would have belittled Tanja for such a foolish idea otherwise.

Times like these were best spent in silence, and Tanja continued to eat her porridge without speech. Mamma needed to think on the matter, and she would be less likely to be swayed to Tanja's side if too much speech were indulged in.

The flickers from the corners of Tanja's eyes became more prominent, and she wanted to know why. What was following her? She hugged her shawl around herself, wishing for a protective hug. It would feel much safer outside at this point, as it felt like Jack was out there, or at least stronger out there. Perhaps she could go outside, and God would grant her one last meeting with Jack as an angel of winter.

"Mamma, may I go outside?"

Mamma did not speak for a couple minutes, but then turned to Tanja and said, "But why do you wish to go outside when you would be going out there alone in the cold?"

Tanja did not have to take the time to think up a response. "I do not feel like I am alone out there. It feels like Jack is watching over me out there."

Mamma sighed, then stood up and handed Tanja's scarf to her. "Please be safe, and do not go anywhere near the lake. My heart could not bear to lose another child."

"I will avoid the lake, mamma," said Tanja as she pulled on her scarf. "I will only walk for a bit." She then bundled up the rest of the way and headed out the door. If all went well, God would smile on her and let her meet Jack.

* * *

Jack couldn't believe his luck. Tannie had heard him. She may not have remembered everything he said during the night, but she heard him, and she was beginning to believe. He couldn't wait until she came outside where he was in his own element, which would give him a much better chance of getting through to her. His powers were just stronger outside.

As he stood rocking on his heels outside of the family home in wait, a figure strolled into view that made him stop his jovial rocking and tense all his muscles at once. That guy looked suspiciously familiar. There really weren't that many guys with platinum hair in Burgess at this point in time, and this guy was walking around like he was really confused. Great, the other Jack had to show up during the one point in time that it was most inconvenient. How was he supposed to dodge him and meet Tannie at the same time?

Jack ducked out of sight beside the house, and breathed a sigh of relief that the other guy never even thought to look his way. That was one problem solved. Now if he could just get Tannie to steer clear of him, all would be good. Things could get really screwy if she were to meet him at that point in his timeline. He wouldn't even remember who she was, which might shatter all her little beliefs he'd worked so hard to cultivate in her.

The front door slammed, and Jack peered around the corner of the house. Tannie stood on the porch, looking around for something. Suddenly, her gaze locked on the spot where the other Jack stood, and her expression turned to one of immense delight. Oh dear, this wasn't good. She _saw_ him, but it was the wrong Jack.

There was no time to be subtle, so Jack launched himself into the air and flew past the porch, plucking Tannie into the air with him as he passed. The other Jack had noticed some kind of disturbance, but simply blinked and walked on, uncomprehending. That was one crisis averted.

When Jack set down on the ground, the first thing Tannie did was try to tear away from his grasp. "Let me go! My brother was back there. I need to talk to him!"

"Tannie!" The girl stopped struggling at the sound of the reprimand and looked at Jack, her gaze locking on him and her jaw fell open. Jack yelped for joy. "You see me, don't you? You really see me!"

A tear rolled down Tannie's cheek. "J-Jack?"

Jack swept her up into a firm hug and let her cry as many tears into him as she wanted. They stung slightly whenever they came into contact with him, but thankfully her tears weren't too hot, just a little uncomfortably warm. It felt so good to be back with his sister that he didn't mind dealing with a minor irritation like having a few human tears come into contact with his skin. He barely noticed them, he was so happy.

He had to set his sister down eventually, and she was still crying when he did, but there was a bigger smile on her face than he had seen on her since he had returned to this time. She was just so happy to finally see him, and he her. They were both too emotional for words for a while, but Jack was fine with that.

Once Tannie was finally able to speak again, the first thing she said was, "Why is your hair white, Jack?"

That was such a weird question to ask as the first question to your seemingly dead brother upon reuniting, but he supposed she just didn't much know what to say, so picked an obvious detail that confused her.

He chuckled and shook his head. "I'd imagine it's just because it's the color of snow. See?" He stretched his arms out to the side so she could see him in his full glory. "All color coordinated and frozen now."

Tannie laughed and touched the front of Jack's blue hoodie, then jerked her hand back. When he wasn't trying to control himself, he could get awfully cold to the touch, and he'd forgotten that Tannie might still want to touch him, even after the hug was done. He'd have to focus more while they talked to each other so he wouldn't accidentally hurt her.

"Why do you wear such strange clothes, Jack? I thought angels wore heavenly robes."

Jack snorted. This angel thing was hilarious. He'd like to see what the other guardians would think right now of him being thought of as an angel. They might not even believe him when he told them that that was what his sister believed he was.

"Well, _I_ don't wear heavenly robes, Tannie. Each, guardian, er, angel, wears whatever makes it easiest to do their job."

"So these clothes make it easier to be the angel of winter?" Jack nodded, and Tannie turned to look back toward where they had flown from just a few minutes before. "Then who was that other person? He looked just like you, but he wore modern clothes."

Modern. Ha! That was a laugh. If only Tannie knew what he thought modern was in his timeline, though she would probably never understand, even if she did know.

Jack sat down on the snow bank and patted the space next to him for her to come and sit by him. "This might be a little hard to explain, but I guess I have to try since you _did_ see that guy."

"Yes, I did," said Tannie, "So you had better tell me, Jack!"

He laughed and mussed up her hair. This girl was just too precious. At least she still treated him like Jack, even if he had funny colored hair now and strange powers. He was still apparently just Jack to her. "Well, long story short, that guy was me too."

Tannie eyed him with such a confused glare that Jack fell down on his back and lost control laughing. He had missed having a little sister so much. Little sisters were great for teasing. They reacted to everything you did and provided a constant source of entertainment.

He sat back up after regaining some control. "That was me just after I became, uh, this." He swept his hand over his body. "That me is still very confused about life and, well, it's just better not to talk to him until he figures himself out."

"How are there two of you?" Tannie pressed her fingers to her temples as though she were about to have a migraine. "And why is one of you more intelligent than the other?"

"Ha, no, it's not like that, Tannie." The laughter was so hard to control at this point, but he had to do what he could. It wasn't Tannie's fault that she had never been exposed to time travel. It wasn't even really discussed in this time as an idea much worth indulging in.

He took a deep breath, then said, "Well, it's sort of like this: that other me is kind of like a-baby angel if you will." He grimaced at the comparison, but Tannie seemed to still be comprehending, so he continued his explanation. "He doesn't know who he is, or what his job is, or how to do it. But I guess you guys needed to hear from me, so-I suppose you could say that God brought an older me back here to talk to you?"

"The Lord answered my prayer."

"Ahem, yes," said Jack. This topic was awkward, especially since he hadn't been particularly religious ever since becoming Jack Frost. He wasn't against it, but becoming a guardian had sort of shattered his sense of reality, and nothing really made sense anymore. If religion still helped his sister, he wouldn't dissuade her, but it would be nice if she stopped referring to him as an angel, at least.

After a period of blissful silence with the two of them just enjoying each other's company, Tannie said, "Jack, how long is God going to allow you to stay here?"

Strange question, but Jack supposed it was inevitable. "I think I can stay here as long as you need me to. I don't get old anymore, so it wouldn't be hard to follow you the rest of your life."

Tannie smiled at hearing that. "But does God not need you in the time He called you from?"

"He probably does," said Jack, "But I'm not the, uh, the angel of time." He winced at the terminology, since it really was not accurate, and he felt like he was tricking his sister every time he used the terms she understood, but he knew no other way to explain things to his sister. "Time will just keep on ticking for me, whether I like it or not. I won't get old or anything, but if I stick around and follow you and your kids and your kids' kids long enough, I'll be back in my own time before too long."

Tannie's eyebrows shot up into a question. "You spoke of several generations! Just how far were you called from, Jack?"

He hung his head, slightly embarrassed, but he had dug his own grave in this matter. Now he had to tell her which time he was from or she would get really confused. "About two hundred years into the future?"

"Two hundred years!" She shook her head, then placed her hand on her forehead as though needing it for leverage. Jack hoped he wasn't breaking her brain. He really didn't want to have to clean up exploded Tannie brain just because he told her too much all at once. "That does explain some things."

Jack raised an eyebrow. "Explains some things?"

"Yes." She nodded. "For instance, you have developed some poor habits in your speech. Was that merely your own slothfulness, or did the entire world's speech fall into disarray?"

"Oh, you wound me, Tannie." Jack feigned being horribly offended by the insinuation that he might not be speaking as well as he once was, though he knew it was true. His speech had changed with the years to match the speech of the current generation. So had his clothes, though he doubted she would perceive that quite as well as she had perceived the speech issue.

"Yes," he said, "the entire world has fallen into verbal disarray by the point I'm from." He snickered at the horrified expression on Tannie's face. She was just _precious_. "Tannie, don't worry so much. The world isn't actually _ending_ or anything. Human speech has just evolved. It does that after a couple hundred years. That's perfectly normal. The way you talk now isn't the way people spoke a couple hundred years ago either."

"I suppose it is not. We do not refer to each other as 'thee' and 'thou'."

"And boy, am I glad of that."

"I beg your pardon," said a slightly offended Tannie, "I am not a boy."

Jack swept his arm in front of Tannie as he stared off into the distance. "Hush." Tannie took Jack's suggestion and hushed, much to Jack's relief. What was going on over there? It looked like a small storm was brewing.

It seemed Tannie noticed it too. "A storm is forming in town, Jack. What is happening?"

He petted her head and smiled at her. "Don't you worry, Tannie. I'll fix it. I think the baby angel is just acting out in a way I don't remember too well." Jack scratched his head and tried to think. "A lot of my early memories are kind of garbled."

"Is it difficult to become an angel?"

Jack responded with an emphatic, "Yes!" which startled the poor girl, so he calmed down a bit and said, "Changing form changes everything about you, Tannie. It takes a long time to adjust."

"But you have adjusted now."

"Mostly, yes."

Tannie pointed to the brewing storm in the distance. "But not him."

"Nope, not him." Jack stood up and reached out his hand to take Tannie's. "Let's get you home. I can navigate you safely through the storm if I take you personally." She nodded and took his hand, and so he launched off the ground and within moments had landed on the front porch of the family home again.

Before letting her go into the house, he held her by both shoulders so she would be forced to look into his eyes and see how serious he was. "Tannie, promise me something. Promise me you won't try to talk to young me. He can't handle talking to people right now."

"I promise."

Jack sighed and looked at the ground, then back at Tannie. He hated to ask her the other thing on his mind, but it couldn't be avoided. Too many bad things could happen if it wasn't addressed. "And also, promise me you won't discuss any of this in front of pappa. He'll have a fit if he hears what you experienced with me today."

Tannie looked sad at hearing Jack say these words, but after a moment or two of hesitation, she nodded. "Very well, Jack. I will not share these things with pappa."

He squeezed her shoulders reassuringly. "Good girl. Now go and get yourself warm while I deal with the crazy brat. Heaven knows I can't keep you warm anymore." Tannie chuckled at that, and Jack pretended he was amused too, even though the thought made him quite sad. He missed being able to enjoy warmth like a human being could. He enjoyed the feeling of cold now, but that wasn't a sensation he could share with many other beings. Most creatures thrived on warmth, not cold.

Jack and Tannie hugged each other one last time and said their goodbyes, and he watched her until she made it into the house safely. Then he turned to face the storm. "Alright, buddy. I've got a bone to pick with you." And he launched himself straight into the middle of it.

He had never tried to talk with another version of himself before. He just hoped he wouldn't make the universe collapse because of it.

_**Okay, hopefully you liked the chapter. The people who have reviewed and sent me PMs, I will get back to you soon. I've just been preoccupied today, but I'm trying to actually respond to everyone for this story, since you guys are helping me a lot. :) Anything any of you have to say, feel free to say it, even if you're just spewing off a bunch of the questions or thoughts in your head. It helps me know what needs to be addressed to make the writing perfectly clear, which helps IMMENSELY.**_

_**Anyway, hope to see you back here next time. Take care, and have a nice day!**_


	4. Chapter 4

_**Sorry I haven't uploaded anything for a few days. The past few days have been kind of hard, and this chapter's been giving me trouble, so I hope it's passable for you guys. I'll try to write up the next chapter by tonight or tomorrow if I have enough energy and inspiration to do so. We shall see. I already have a pretty good idea of where this story will end though. :)**_

_**Anyway, hope you enjoy the chapter!**_

_**Disclaimer: Too bored to come up with something stupid to say here, so I'll just say that I don't own Rise of the Guardians. (That still feels weird, I'm sorry.)**_

The first thing Jamie saw when he arrived home was his little sister jumping around in slush puddles. There was nothing strange about that, except that there were slush puddles to jump into in the midst of December. Sophie was so carefree about it that part of him wondered if perhaps he was just overreacting to things. His mom always enjoyed reminding him that he had a tendency to overreact to things, and he was getting to the age where he was starting to wonder if maybe she might be right about that.

"Pret-ty, pret-ty, pret-ty," said Sophie as she jumped from one pile of slush to the next. Jamie couldn't fathom what she found so pretty about slush puddles. He knew Mom certainly wasn't going to think it was so pretty when Sophie went inside all sopping wet like she was getting, not to mention that the slush was a bit muddy and Sophie's little blue overalls were quickly becoming something less than blue. He shielded his library items under his coat and headed to the front door.

"Fai-ry pret-ty, fai-ry pret-ty!" Jamie jerked his head around and looked at his sister. What had she just said? Had she said something about a fairy? He carefully set his things down on the porch and went to join Sophie, hoping he could do it without getting too soaked, since he didn't feel like changing before dinner.

"Did you see a fairy, Sophie?"

"Fairy! Fairy! Fairy!" Sophie jumped up and down in front of Jamie, then turned and started dancing around him like a little ballerina. That wasn't much help. He needed her to focus so he could actually get the answers to his questions.

He grabbed her by the shoulders and knelt down to her level. "Sophie, look at me. Did you see a fairy?"

"Uh huh. She's pretty!"

"I know she is," said Jamie, who really hoped they were both talking about the same fairy. If there was someone else besides the tooth fairy who was likely to pay a visit to the Bennett house, then he had yet to hear about it. Though even if it had been the tooth fairy, she could have just been visiting on a routine mission. Jamie looked hard at Sophie and said, "Did you lose a tooth, Sophie?"

"Mm-mmm." She shook her head so hard her hair flicked into Jamie's face and made him sneeze.

"But you saw the tooth fairy. Here at the house?"

"Uh huh." Sophie started bouncing on the balls of her feet. Her energy was really hard to contain, it seemed. Even at Jamie's age, when adults all claimed he had too much energy, he couldn't understand where she got all her energy from.

"Well, do you know what she wanted?"

"Uh-uh." Sophie shook her head. Jamie sighed. Pity Sophie didn't know how to ask the right questions, or even how to understand the answers that were given.

"Aw man!" Jamie rolled his eyes and huffed. Why didn't someone make this easy for him? "Did she tell you where she was going?" As expected, Sophie shook her head. It was pointless. His sister had seen the tooth fairy, which proved that something really was going on and he wasn't just overreacting, but he had no way to tell what was going on from his sister. Sophie was just too young to understand these things.

He let Sophie go and continue romping through the slush piles, and he gathered up his things from the porch and went into the house and ran to his room. If there was any chance that anything was left for him to find, it would be in his room. None of the Guardians would have trusted anyone else in the house.

After throwing his things over a chair, he spun around, looking everywhere in the room for anything out of place. If the tooth fairy had been here, she probably would have left at least one thing out of place, even though he couldn't see anything wrong. "Hello? Is anyone here?" he called to the air, but got no response.

Jamie sat on his bed in a frump. He wanted to know what was going on, but no one was helping him understand what to do, even though he was trying his best. This was maddening. Why wouldn't anyone tell him anything? Something was definitely going on. He wasn't too young to understand. Couldn't people see that?

He flopped down on his bed, when he heard a strange crunch. That was really weird. He rolled over to his side, and the crunching repeated. It was reacting to the shift in his body weight. He must have laid on top of something. If that was the case, he needed to sit up and find it, so he sat up, but the crunching noise stopped as soon as he did. He bounced up and down in bed a few times, but the crunching noise eluded him. Where had it gone?

In frustration, he flopped back down on the bed, and promptly heard the crunch again. That was it! This was the tooth fairy, right? Where would she leave anything that she wanted no one but the kid to find? Under their pillow, of course! Jamie pulled up his pillow, and sure enough, there was a little envelope underneath it with his name spelled out in elegant script.

Before the difficult little thing could disappear, Jamie grabbed it and held it close to his chest so he could ensure that it wouldn't get away from him again. After replacing his pillow, he tore the envelope open and pulled out the little slip of paper inside it. It took a couple moments for his fumbling fingers to manage to open the piece of paper so he could read it, but he eventually managed to make it cooperate.

Upon reading the message though, he sighed and looked to the heavens, as though someone were standing by and listening. "Why won't you just tell me what's going on? I want to know _now_."

He placed the letter on his bed, and it slid off the bed and fell down next to his feet, where it fell open. It read, "Go to bed early tonight."

* * *

Why did Jack have to be such an idiot when he was younger? He didn't want to have to be the one to deal with the nutcase now. One wasn't supposed to have to deal with themselves when they got older. That was why time travel wasn't possible for most people, because it wasn't natural to have Older You come back to straighten out Younger You. He wished someone else would just take care of the stupid, but no one else even knew he was here except Tannie, and she was powerless against him. He might kill her before he realized his own strength.

"Hey, you!" Jack shouted into the storm, but he didn't get any response. The storm had gotten incredibly thick in the space of just a few minutes. If it got any worse, it might start tearing houses apart, and he didn't want to think of what that could mean for the people he cared about in this time and place. He dove down into the thick of the storm and looked left and right, trying to find the center of the storm. Find the center, and you find stupid Jack.

There was one thing older Jack knew that younger Jack didn't know, and that was that Jack Frost didn't control the wind. The wind just cooperates much of the time because it liked Jack, but young Jack couldn't understand what the wind was doing. Older Jack could use this to his advantage.

"Wind, take me to the center."

Windy fingers grabbed him, and he circled Burgess several times at the mercy of the wind until it zeroed in on where the storm originated from. Having achieved its purpose, it released its grip and dropped Jack from the sky, where he flailed as he fell to the ground. The wind had a nasty habit of being flaky like that. Jack suspected it thought it was being funny by picking people up and dropping them like that. At least it couldn't hurt him with it.

Jack landed on his back with an, "Oomph!"

The other Jack spun in his perch and thrust his staff out as though it was some sort of weapon. "Who goes there?"

Older Jack sat up slowly and brushed the snow out of his hair. He picked up his own staff and pointed it back at his double. "Put down the staff, dude. I'm better at using this thing than you are."

The other Jack backed off slightly, but continued to hold his staff in front of him defensively. The dummy. After three hundred years, Jack had learned that you really don't want to mess with someone with a lot more skill than you. It never ended well. But this guy still was under the delusion that he could take on an expert. Smart, Jack, real smart.

The dummy wasn't going to stop on his own, so Jack pushed himself up to a standing position again, and once again pointed his staff at the young Jack. "You gotta calm down, you dummy! You're going to hurt a lot of innocent people!"

"Why does no one acknowledge my existence?" Young Jack pulled at his hair and screeched into the wind. "Why do you see me now?"

Jack rolled his eyes. This was just idiotic. Had he really been this bad when he was this age? He smacked his younger self on the back. Hard. "Because I'm _you_, stupid! I'm from three hundred years into your future."

Younger Jack seethed and rounded on Jack, waving his staff threateningly, though Jack wasn't entirely sure whether he should find this guy all that threatening with his pitiful skill with snow and ice. "What is this devilry you speak of? Be you a wizard, or a sorceror? Mayhaps a necromancer, as you commune with the dead."

The first reaction Jack had to this was to slap his hand across his mouth to prevent his giggles from going too hysterical. This guy was really too much, and he found that despite his precautions, he went hysterical anyway. Jack rolled around on the ground, paralyzed from laughter. He hadn't really talked like this at one point, had he? Someone was just going to show up in a few minutes to say it was all a joke, right? Surely, once he had become Jack Frost, he had stopped being such a dork.

He cracked an eye open to check on his double, who happened to be staring at him incredulously. That wasn't the look of someone who was merely playing a prank. Nope, this guy was dead serious in his speech. That launched Jack into another fit of giggles accompanied by a bit of headbanging in time with his saying, "No. No. No. I didn't act like this. I didn't!"

"The devil has overcome you with lunacy." Looking at his younger double again and seeing the straight face on the boy forced Jack to acknowledge that yes, he really had acted like this in the past, whether he wanted to admit it or not. And talked like this. In fact, he sounded a bit dorkier to his own ears than his sister and his mother combined, and that took skill. Young Jack was extremely skilled at being a dork.

"Nope," said Jack, standing up at last and brushing off his clothes in an attempt to regain a tiny bit of dignity, "I'm just looney all on my own. Sanity is boring." The other Jack merely quirked an eyebrow as though trying to translate that thought into some other language. What was so difficult to understand about sanity being dull?

"What are you trying to say?" he said, and Older Jack laughed. This guy really _was_ hoping for a translation. He'd forgotten what it had been like back when English was new to him, and it was so strange to see it smacked up against him once more. It was no problem though. He still spoke Norwegian just fine.

"Dei galne har mange morosame stunder som den vettige ikkje har."

A cough from Younger Jack, and he said, "It does not mean I wish to join you in your insanity."

Older Jack merely shrugged. He had told his younger self that the maniacs have many funny hours that the sane guy does not have. It was a strange old saying from Norway. Not everyone understood his ways, and he didn't expect them to, though he knew that Younger Jack would eventually see his way somehow, since that was exactly what had happened. "Dei galnaste seier sannast."

Younger Jack's knuckles tightened around his staff, and Jack almost thought that they had turned slightly whiter from the pressure, if that was possible. His skin was almost white as it was, which made that hard to achieve. Perhaps the guy didn't like being told that the craziest speak most truly. Younger Jack was clearly under some extreme stress, especially since the blizzard began to pick up even stronger. This was not good. He had to stop delaying and actually do something about this.

"Stop it! Calm down before you hurt somebody!" The other Jack wasn't listening at all. This didn't leave him much choice. "Sorry, dude," he said, "But you asked for it."

He raised his staff and sent a wave of ice through it, pummeling Young Jack until he fell to the ground and dropped his staff, which made the storm stop almost instantaneously. That was a huge relief. Now to deal with the idiot who was frozen in the ice. Perhaps this was the reason Jack didn't remember this encounter at all, since he'd had to get forcefully frozen through it all. He shook his head and clicked his tongue sadly. It was really a pity that this idiot was him. He didn't want to think that badly of himself, but he was being forced to confront the fact that he was once an idiot.

Jack threw his staff over his shoulder and began to walk away. "I'll send someone to you to melt the ice. Until then, think long and hard about what you really want to say to me so you don't panic next time you run into me, okay?" Of course, there was no response, since Jack's victim was imprisoned in the ice, but Jack knew he had heard. Somehow he vaguely remembered a reprimand like that in his past, but he brushed it out of his mind. It wasn't very pleasant to think about.

* * *

"What a weird family," said Jamie's dad as he looked through some of the articles that Jamie had collected on his research trip. "What kind of Norwegian family would name their son Jackson?"

Was Jamie expected to try and answer that question? He didn't know the answer to it if he was expected to answer it. All he knew was what Jack's name was, not why he got it. The best he could offer his father was a shrug, and so he did.

Jamie's mother then walked in and chuckled as she set down a plate of snacks before the two hungry men. Jamie wholeheartedly grabbed himself a muffin and started tearing into it, even as his father absently grabbed himself a cookie without taking his eyes off the article he was reading.

"I'm sure his family was just excited about moving to America and gave him a name that would blend in better here," said his mom.

"Then why did they name his sister 'Taaan-juh'?" said Jamie. "I've never even _heard_ of that name!"

"Yes, you have, Jamie," said his father, who put the paper down for a moment to look at his son. "It's not pronounced 'Taaan-juh', it's pronounced 'Tahn-ya'. You have a cousin with that name."

"But it's spelled differently," Jamie protested.

"Doesn't matter," said his father, going straight back to looking at the article. "It's a common name from a lot of countries, but they all spell it differently. They probably just gave her a familiar name after they moved because they were homesick."

Well, if nothing else, at least his dad had taught him how to pronounce Tanja so he wouldn't look stupid whenever Jack came back, if he came back. Jamie's gut lurched when he allowed himself to think that vile thought, and he mentally kicked himself for even permitting such a thought into his head. Of course Jack would come back. The other Guardians wouldn't allow him to be gone long. They worked together, and the Tooth Fairy had apparently already noticed that something was strange, as she had scheduled a meeting with him later that night. This problem would be fixed very soon, and everything would be back to normal.

Jamie's mother sat down at the dining room table and smiled at Jamie, who smiled back nervously, wondering if she was going to expect any sort of weird explanation for why he was doing this project besides what he had told the teacher.

"I think it's wonderful that you're doing this project," said Jamie's mom. "I've been worrying about your grades a little bit, but if you do a good job on this report, those grades should be taken care of."

Yep, that was his mom. Always worried about stupid things like grades rather than noticing that her kids were talking to invisible characters from their fairytale books. Some of his friends' parents were starting to get worried about their kids being so "out of touch with reality" as they said, but he didn't think his mom had even noticed yet. He hoped it stayed that way for a while.

"I've always been intrigued by the history of Overland Lake," continued his mom. "That's really creepy that that poor boy just disappeared without a trace. Did you know that they never found his body?"

Jamie had figured that, since he knew where that body had gone to, but he wasn't about to tell his mom that the body was never found because it had been brought back to life and turned into a fairy that makes it snow, so he just shrugged and pretended not to be interested. "It's a big lake."

"Not really," said his father, looking up from his reading again. "It shouldn't have been too hard for them to find a body in Overland Lake, even back then when they didn't have our modern technology. Bodies float, you know?"

That sounded disgusting. It reminded him of his dead goldfish that he'd had to flush down the toilet last year, and he thought the job of taking care of it had been extremely gross. He didn't want to think of Jack ever being that gross, but he couldn't picture it, even if he tried. Jack just wasn't a gross guy. He was fun, and he had cool hair.

Then Jamie's mother chuckled in a strangely gleeful way, and Jamie snapped his attention to her nervously. What was going on with her? His mom blinked her eyes a couple times, and it looked like a light had flickered on inside them. Something about this conversation must have excited her, but he couldn't say what it was.

"There are some amusing ghost stories revolving around that lake."

Ah, that was what it was. His mom couldn't resist a good ghost story. It was where he had inherited his love of the paranormal. He really hoped that his mom hadn't chosen to live in Burgess rather than her hometown simply because her husband's hometown was filled with ghost stories, but he wouldn't have been surprised if that had been the case. His mom was kind of loopy when it came to a good ghost story.

"Would any of them help Jamie's project?" said his dad.

"Hmmm, let's see." Jamie's mom rubbed at her chin a moment in thought, and Jamie gulped. He was going to be subjected to ghost stories now, wasn't he? It wasn't like he had anything against ghost stories. He enjoyed them just as much as the next guy-so long as the next guy enjoyed ghost stories, but his mom enjoyed them a little _too_ much. He could be stuck here for hours at this rate.

"I don't know if all the stories are about the Overland boy or not, but most of them take place around the lake. There was a story about one girl who was down by the lake one October before the first snow fell, and she heard something big fall onto the ground behind her. When she turned around to look, there was nothing there, but the ground was freezing over from the point where she had thought she'd heard something fall."

Jamie's eyes opened wide at the story. That had to have been Jack. Who else could it have been? He leaned forward eagerly. "So what happened?"

"I heard she ran all the way home to get away from the frost, but the frost chased her there. When she got indoors, it didn't hurt her, but the entire town was covered in snow the next morning."

"Sounds like someone had a lively imagination," said Jamie's dad.

The comment had made Jamie uneasy, since he wasn't sure what his dad would say of him talking to Jack if he ever found out, but it just made his mom start laughing. Yep, Mom was strange. There was just no denying it. "It's a ghost story, Henry. You don't analyze a ghost story."

Jamie's dad grumbled and went back to his reading. It amazed Jamie that his dad could find that much worthy of being read in the materials Jamie had brought home, since the stuff that was particularly about Jack was very limited, but his dad just kept reading and reading and reading. And Jamie's mom was suddenly seeming a lot more interesting to Jamie.

"Do you have any more stories like that?" asked Jamie.

"I do," she said, "but we're about to have dinner. How about I help you with your homework afterward, hon?"

Jamie did a melodramatic sigh, but accepted the conditions of her storytelling. He wouldn't have to wait too long for her stories, and she had information that he would have a hard time finding elsewhere. It was worth the wait. He hoped. Maybe if he was lucky, there'd be something in her stories that would provide an obvious link between Jackson Overland and Jack Frost. Then he could write an even better report about him.

Though if he were honest with himself, that wasn't actually what he wanted to find out from his mom. There was something nagging at the back of his mind that he couldn't explain. Perhaps it seemed a little farfetched, but he couldn't help but try.

He hoped his mom's stories would give him a clue as to what had happened to Jack.

_**There you go. Hope you liked. :) As always, feel free to comment or ask questions or whatever, as it helps me to know what you're thinking about and what I need to make clear in this story. Otherwise, I hope to see you on the next chapter. Thanks for reading, and take care!**_


	5. Chapter 5

_**Well, I managed to write another chapter. Yeah! Sorry that I don't seem to be managing to write a chapter of this every day like I was hoping. Life is more chaotic than I gave it credit for, but I'll continue to update this. I want to see it complete its story just as badly as the rest of you. ;)**_

_**Also, I delayed myself a little bit because I was working on a cover for this story, but as I'm a bit of a perfectionist, it's going to be a while yet before I upload it. Sorry about that, but I'll try my best to get it up by the next chapter or two.**_

_**Anyway, without further ado, here's the next chapter of Dabba Dabba Dove. Hope you enjoy!**_

_**Disclaimer: I do not own Rise of the Guardians. And I'm going to try not to react to it sounding weird... aw, darn. Saying anything about it is reacting to it, isn't it?**_

A new soul had entered the fold. That much she could tell, as she could feel it, but something was rather strange about the whole situation, and she could not place what was so odd about it. She had witnessed plenty of nature sprites being born, but none that felt like this one. It almost felt like there was too much of this one around, though that did not make any sense. The Man in the Moon was not that foolish, surely. But if it was not the Man in the Moon who had done this, then who had?

A knock on the door to her tree palace startled her out of her trance. Who could that be? Mortals could rarely ever see her or her palace in the trees, and she was not on the best of the terms with most of the other guardian spirits in the world, except for the nature spirits under her jurisdiction. They understood her in a way that no one else did.

That was that. She was not going to answer the door. If it was someone who understood her, they would know what it took to get her attention, but if it was someone else, then she would rather them leave. The last thing she needed was more complaints about the crazy weather in the Middle East or the erratic snowfall in Europe. If someone would just get her a winter sprite, she could tend to more pressing needs than ensuring winter went well.

"Seraphina?"

The woman raised an eyebrow at the name. So whoever it was who was calling knew her name at least. It was better than having someone bow down before her to implore the good graces of the great Mother Nature when her supposed 'good graces' were minimal, to say the least. But simply knowing her name didn't mean she liked them. They could freeze out there in the cold for all she cared.

The rapping at the door got louder and more obnoxious. She wished the person would just leave already. "I know you're in there, Seraphina. You've got your palace lit up with salamanders."

This idiot was somewhat knowledgeable, knowing that one could not leave salamanders alone in a tree palace when one had to go about their rounds to do their work. Salamanders were lively fire spirits who would likely start playing with each other and leave nothing but a pile of ashes where the palace had stood by the time one arrived home. That knowledge still did not mean the person was anyone she would respect though.

"Alright, fine, don't answer the door. I'll just wait out here until you come out."

The caller was definitely an idiot. He would freeze out there if he stayed until she came out. It was the middle of December, and she liked to keep December _cold_, like December was supposed to be. If he wanted to complain about her winter practices, then he should just go and complain to the Man in the Moon until he gave her the hired help she needed.

"I'm just going to stay here all night then."

That did it. Who did this guy think he was, messing with Mother Nature? She was not going to just leave a guy out there to freeze to death, but he was going to suffer her wrath for disturbing her. Then he would know the incredible depth of his idiocy and wish he had never sought her out.

She stomped toward the front door, muttering something to herself about how people should be required to undergo a speech exam before appealing to Mother Nature for help so that they sounded less like idiots. She unlocked the door and grabbed the door handle as she heaved the massive door open.

"Come in!" she yelled, and the character stepped in, nonchalant at her bitterness. In a way, that made her all the more enraged. One does not push Mother Nature around and not care about it. This crazy boy was going to pay for what he did, just as soon as she was sure he was not going to die from the cold. She did not want to deal with cleaning up the mess.

The boy was wearing a strange sort of cloak that did not go down his back all the way, and she could not understand how it managed to keep him warm. It had a hood, which the boy was wearing, despite the lack of necessary length to make the cloak thing useful. The boy's breeches were normal, though still largely useless, and the only other thing he had on his person was a large branch he carried in one hand. She could not fathom how he was not frozen to death already, as he did not even have shoes on his feet. If she had not had the good heart to allow him inside, he would never have survived the rough conditions she had set up outside.

The boy lowered his hood and looked around at her palace, though he did not look long enough in her opinion to be amazed by its ornateness, which annoyed her. Who could not be amazed by her palace? He acted like he had become familiar with it already, though that was impossible. She had never allowed this imp into her palace before, and after looking at him, she was likely to never allow him into her palace again.

He looked at her. "Long time, no see, Seraphina."

That did it. He was going way too far. "Stop pretending like you know me, you little insect! You should consider yourself fortunate that I had the heart to allow you to come inside instead of freezing to death!"

His reaction was not something she ever would have predicted. He started laughing. And it wasn't just a mild laugh. It was a laugh that emanated up from his belly and shook his whole frame. It even reverberated off the walls and vibrated back into her. That was one heavy laugh, and she did not appreciate it. She had not approved it for her palace, and it was therefore unacceptable.

"Oh, Seraphina." He rubbed at his eyes as though the laughter made his eyes hurt. "I forgot just how uppity you used to be."

No one insulted her and got away with it like that. She began to conjure up some storm clouds around her as she pondered precisely how she would torture the boy as soon as her rage got intense enough. She would not kill him, oh no. She would merely make him seriously regret coming. Possibly make him very sick too. That could be enjoyable.

"If you have come here to complain about the weather, then you may as well just leave now before I have my way with you."

To her surprise, the boy plopped down on a seat and made himself more comfortable. That was not the sort of reaction she expected from people. He was acting like her nature spirits acted around her, but this person was not one of them. She was quite close to all of them and _only_ them. This boy had no business pretending to be one of her precious nature spirits.

"Not coming to complain, Seraphina. I rather like what you've done with the place." He winked at her, which startled her. She highly doubted that he was referring to her palace, since he seemed to be taking that for granted, but how could anyone like her weather outside? Nearly every sprite but herself hated it, unless they were one of _hers_.

"What do you want?"

He leaned forward on his staff and peered at her seriously. "I've come to ask you a favor."

Indignation flared up within her. Who did he think he was to ask a favor of _her_? One did not ask any favors of anyone when one could not offer something of value in return, and no one could possibly offer anything of value to Mother Nature. She had everything she wanted. Almost.

"How is it that you propose to ask me a favor without bringing any sort of offering in place that I may determine the value of your request?"

A mischievous look played across the boy's face. "Who said anything about me not bringing an offering?"

Seraphina sputtered and said, "But all you have brought with you is the old dry branch of yours! I do not need another branch when I have billions of them at my beck and call across the world."

The young man chuckled, then pushed himself up to standing position with his staff. "Believe me, Seraphina, this 'branch' of mine will provide me with the best offering I can give you. See, I know exactly what it is you want, and I know how to give it to you."

She crossed her arms and glared at the boy. The impudent fool, thinking he could outsmart her. Well, two could play at this game. She would make him show her whatever it was he had to offer her first, and then when he could not produce what he pretended to have, she could punish him for fraudulence against Mother Nature. That would be a satisfying ending to this whole affair.

"Very well. Let us see your shenanigans and see if I appreciate what you have to offer."

He smiled wordlessly, then closed his eyes and lifted his staff over his head. What was he doing? He looked like an idiot, posing like that. The boy then dropped his staff down so it smacked onto the floor, and the floor suddenly froze over. Seraphina yelped and jumped back, allowing the ice to pass beneath her feet to freeze the entire floor.

The strange boy, seeing this reaction of hers, burst out laughing and ran around the palace, swinging his staff to freeze this pillar and that pillar, and then swinging his staff to send flurries of snow in her direction. She reached out to catch some of the snowflakes that glided her way. The snow melted in her hand, the little droplets left behind by the snow only matching the tears that were forming in her eyes. A winter sprite. He was a winter sprite. The Man in the Moon had finally given her one.

Her demeanor toward the stranger changed in an instant. She could not fathom how he had known exactly how to get through to her in this way when he was just a newborn, or how he had such amazing control of his element already, but she did not care. She had her winter sprite, finally. She wanted nothing more at this point in time, and only wanted to ensure that this boy was willing to work under her and take winter off of her hands. His snowflakes were already a much better quality than she had ever been able to produce. There would be a lot fewer complaints now that he was around.

"A-About that favor you wanted to ask..." she said, and the boy stopped running around, turned to her, and smiled.

He threw his staff over his shoulder. "Well, it's a simple request, but it's sort of a long story."

She straightened her robe and sat down on the nearest surface that was suitable for sitting on. "I am willing to listen. Please enlighten me."

He came over to where she was sitting and sat in a seat across from her. "How do I put this? I, uh, I'm not from around here exactly."

"But whatever do you mean?" she said. "Of course you were not born right here. You were born elsewhere, or I would have found you myself."

He waved his hand. "No, no, not like that. I mean, um, well..." He scratched the back of his head nervously. What did he have to be so nervous about? "I had a bit of a fight with Father Time, so I kind of got bumped back in time a couple hundred years."

"You mean you are not-from this time?" Her countenance fell, and a heavy weight settled on her heart. She did not want to have to wait another couple hundred years for her winter sprite to finally show up. She was so relieved to know she was going to get one at all, but waiting another couple hundred years for him was going to be so painful. She needed him _now_, not two hundred years from now. Could the Man in the Moon not see how desperate her need was? Controlling all of nature all over the world was simply too much strain on her, and she could not do the job well.

"It's okay," he said, and he reached a hand over and placed it on her shoulder. It felt cold to the touch, which was a strangely comforting feeling, considering that she hadn't actually had a winter sprite in a long time since the last one had died in a forest fire several hundred years prior. "You don't have to wait two hundred years for me to show up."

"I do not?" she said, "How many years must I wait for you to appear once you return to your own time?"

"None," he said. "I was just born a few days ago."

Her eyes snapped open as the information registered in her mind. This was how the information had all fit together. There was indeed a newborn nature sprite around, a winter sprite in fact, but it felt like there was too much of him around because his future self was time traveling due to an argument with Father Time. So therefore, it was not the idiocy of the Man in the Moon for doing this, but Father Time. And possibly her winter sprite, though she hated to admit that he really might be that stupid.

She let out the breath she had been holding, letting a few small clouds drift up toward the ceiling and disappear. Seraphina pressed her hands to her heart. "My winter sprite. I finally have a winter sprite."

"Yes," he said, "if you'll do one small thing for me."

"What would that be?"

She never expected the response he gave. "Thaw me out."

* * *

"Once upon a time," said Jamie's mom, starting out the story with the corniest line she could think of, "There lived a little family with a mom, a dad, a boy, and a girl. And they were very happy together, until one day, the boy died."

Jamie quirked an eyebrow at his mother. "Is this just a ghost story, or does it have something to do with Overland Lake?"

"It's a local story," said his mom. "I don't know if it has to do with your Jackson Overland person or not, but it might. The story doesn't say, but the boy died. We know that much."

"Okay," said Jamie.

"So," said his mom, "the family was very sad, until one day the girl's room froze over. She thought a ghost was in her room and she went to get her parents. When they saw it, they thought it was a ghost too, so they went to the priest to get help."

"Why would they go to a priest for a ghost?" said Jamie.

"That's what they did back then," said his mom, "Don't interrupt, Jamie, I'm telling a story. Now, where was I? Oh yes. They went to the priest to get help, and on the way, a freak blizzard sprung up. 'Surely the devil is trying to stop us!' they said. The next thing they knew, they were lifted out of town by unseen hands and saved from that awful storm. 'God's angel has saved us!' they said. And meanwhile, unseen eyes were watching them, laughing at everything they said."

"Who was it?" said Jamie, leaning forward eagerly. He hated to admit it, but he was getting into the story more than he normally did. This story had already mentioned frozen stuff twice, and it sounded like something Jack would do.

Jamie's mother laughed. "Oh, you silly. Can't you just wait for the story to tell you itself?"

"No," said Jamie, "Who was it?"

More laughter from Jamie's mom, but then she finally said, "Alright, fine. It was the ghost of the boy. He had been trying to get their attention, and didn't want them ruining his chances by going to the priest before he could talk to them. But he'd scared them a bit, because he had somehow managed to get control of the weather."

Yep, that was Jack. There was no doubt about it. It had to be Jack.

"Anyway, the sister started hearing him talk that night, and by the next morning, she could see him. She was so happy, and so was he, because they weren't separated anymore. She was so happy in fact, that she went and taught her mother how to see him, and her father, and everyone in town, because she thought that if everyone could see him, that he would be able to live almost normally among them again."

Jamie nodded. "Makes sense, I guess." Even though it didn't entirely make sense, really, because Jack had told him in the past that Jamie was his first believer. He wasn't sure how a whole town of believers fit into that equation if Jamie was supposedly the first.

His mom held up a finger to halt his speech. "It sounds like it makes sense, but it only works if everyone actually _wants_ to live like that. See, there were some people who thought that a ghost wandering the streets of Burgess was the last thing this town needed, and they decided to do something about it."

Jamie snorted. If this story really was about Jack, there really was nothing they could do to stop him. No one controls Jack.

"They thought long and hard on the matter, and figured out that the ghost was made out of ice, which meant that if they melted the ghost, he would die."

Jamie slapped his hands on the table. "Wait, what?" He hadn't just heard that last bit, had he? And even if he had, it was just a stupid idea the villagers had come up with that didn't hold any water, right?

"Yep, that's what they came up with," said his mom. "It turned out to be true, because the ghost panicked when his sister told him the townspeople's plot. He tried to get away before they could do anything, but they had laid a trap for him, and he couldn't get away. Then they set up this huge bonfire in the middle of town and dragged this thoroughly bound ghost toward the fire. He was scared, because he knew that fire would kill him, and his mother and sister were screaming too since they didn't want him gone, but there was nothing they could do."

Jamie's fingers squirmed their way up into his hair, and before he realized it, his mom was gently prying his fingers away from the hair he was trying to pull out of his head. He hadn't realized he had gotten so tense, but he was picturing someone trying to melt Jack, and that wasn't a pleasant thought. No one had ever actually tried to do that, had they? And if they had, it hadn't worked, right? He was still alive in this time and place, so he must have gotten out of it okay.

"I'm sorry, Jamie. I didn't know this story would scare you so much. I probably shouldn't tell you how it ends."

"No!" He shot up from his seat to a standing position and bumped the table slightly in doing so. "You've got to tell me!"

His mother sighed. "Jamie, it ends on a scary note. Are you sure you can handle it?" Jamie nodded his head weakly, so his mother waved at him and told him to sit down, which he did in a heartbeat.

"Here's the end," she said, "But it sounds like you won't like it. The ghost was waiting to be tossed into the fire, and his family was screaming, and everyone was cheering that they were about to get rid of the ghost, when a horrible shadow monster suddenly appeared over the fire. It said, 'Your cries and shouts have reached my ears in the mountains, and have aroused me from my slumber. I now come to you furious and hungry. Give me a sacrifice, lest I destroy your entire village.'

"Needless to say, the villagers were terrified and were looking around at each other, wondering what to do. They didn't want to sacrifice any of their own to this hideous monster, but it was about to kill them all.

"Then the ghost spoke up, and said, 'I don't belong here anyway, and none of you should lose your lives over this. Just give me to the beast, and the town will be spared."

"No!" said Jamie, and he pounded his fist on the table.

His mom shook her finger at him. "Jamie, do you want to hear the rest of the story or not?"

He nodded remorsefully. "Yes, Mom."

"Then keep quiet. Anyway, they weren't sure if that would be an acceptable sacrifice, since it was a ghost and all, so they asked the monster if that would work. The monster said, 'I will accept your ghost as my sacrifice so long as none of you harm one another like this ever again.' The villagers agreed to this, and the monster said, 'And the family of the ghost must journey beyond the boundaries of the town after midnight tonight to speak with me, alone, or I will return to seek my revenge.' This was a much more terrifying thought to them, but the townspeople and the ghost's family agreed, since it meant saving the town.

'So the ghost was offered up to the monster, which devoured the boy in one gulp, and then the monster disappeared. The only people who ever saw any trace of the monster after that were the parents and sister of the boy, who met with it one last time. It gave them this message: 'Live your lives and move on. Don't let anyone hold you back from your own happiness.' Then the monster vanished from their midst, and it was never seen again, but the town lived in peace forever after that. The End."

There was silence for several moments after that. That story hadn't even entirely made sense, but not all ghost stories did, which was why Jamie didn't spend as much time obsessing over ghost stories as his mom did. Sometimes they really did have disappointing endings like that, though this one was beyond disappointing, since it hinted at his best friend dying, and that was not cool. Jack couldn't die. Jack had to live. Jack wasn't-well, this story _was_ in the past, so he was probably worrying too much, since whatever had happened, Jack had obviously gotten through it.

Jamie moistened his lips. He didn't know if he dared ask any questions on this story, but he felt he wouldn't be able to get away with not doing it. He was much too frazzled. "Mom, did you ever find out how that ghost was dressed or anything? I-I'm trying to picture it."

"Oh yeah," she said, as she scratched her head. "I'd forgotten about that. The stories always described him as this strange boy who wore normal trousers, but had a strange blue shirt made of a material they had never seen before, and he carried around a large magical staff that he used to control the weather."

Jamie's head smacked into the table. Yep, he knew way more than he wanted to know now. That was definitely Jack in the story, but it wasn't Jack during the right time, since blue hoodies didn't exist back then, which meant that somehow Jack had traveled through time or something. This could only mean one thing.

Somehow, Jack was going to die.

_**Yes, I know, I'm evil. I apologize. But cliffhangers make for much better stories in the long run. I'll write up the next chapter as soon as I'm able. In the meantime, feel free to write to me about whatever is on your mind, be it questions, comments, suggestions, or anything. Chatting is fine too. I enjoy chatting with my readers. :)**_

_**In any case, thanks for taking the time to read this today, and I hope to see you around next time!**_


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